Background

Thisbe Nissen was born on May 14, 1972 in New York City, New York, United States.

Education

Nissen studied at Hunter College High School. In 1994, she received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Oberlin College. She also has a Master of Fine Arts degree in Fiction from the Iowa Writers Workshop, the University of Iowa.

Career

Nissen met her agent, Eric Simonoff, while she was a participant in the Iowa Writers Workshop in 1995. A couple of years later, she sent him a copy of her first novel, Maud and Drew, her own master's thesis, but Simonoff was unsuccessful in finding a publisher for the work. Nissen kept herself busy, writing short stories, and sent individual stories out to "every contest there is," she related in an interview with Authors on the Web. Many of her stories were eventually published in well-respected publications, such as North American Review, Story and Seventeen. The University of Iowa Press then issued a collection of several of her published short stories under the title Out of the Girls' Room and Into the Night.

After Out of the Girls' Room and Into the Night was published, Nissen gained more confidence in her writing. She also won the attention of publishers. She began writing a novel, using one of the short stories from Out of the Girls' Room and Into the Night, titled The Rather Unlikely Courtship of Edwin Anderson and Roz Rosenzweig. As she thought about possible episodes for these two characters, she realized, that there was a link between them and another short story from her published collection, Think About If You Want. By combining these two stories and filling in personal histories, she eventually created her second novel, The Good People of New York.

Nissen taught at the 3rd Annual Writers in Paradise at Eckerd College in 2007. In the spring of the same year, she taught at Columbia University. From 2007 to 2009, Nissen taught fiction workshops at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. Since 2010, she has been an associate professor of English at Western Michigan University.

Nissen has also taught a fiction course at least once a year since the foundation of the Iowa Young Writers' Workshop, except in 2006. She has also taught at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Iowa Elderhostel.

Achievements

• Thisbe Nissen is best known as a writer and contributor of short fiction to periodicals, including Story, Seventeen, The Iowa Review, The American Scholar, Virginia Quarterly Review and North American Review. Her fiction has been anthologized in The Iowa Award: The Best Stories 1991-2000 and Best American Mystery Stories. Also, Thisbe's nonfiction has appeared in Vogue, Glamour, Preservation and The Believer.
  
  Thisbe Nissen is the author of several novels and the co-author, with Erin Ergenbright, of The Ex-Boyfriend Cookbook, a collection of stories, recipes and art collages. Her work, titled Out of the Girls' Room and Into the Night, won the John Simmons Short Fiction Award.

Works

More photos

• audiobook

  • Our Lady of the Prairie

    (A sharp and bitingly funny novel about a professor whose,...)

    2018
  • Out of the Girls' Room and Into the Night

    (Out of the Girls' Room and Into the Night is a spirited, ...)

    1999

• book

  • The Good People of New York

    (When Roz Rosenzweig meets Edwin Anderson, fumbling for ke...)

    2001
  • Osprey Island

    (As summer begins on Osprey Island, preparations at the Lo...)

    2004
  • The Ex-Boyfriend Cookbook 2002

Views

Her novel, The Good People of New York, Nissen has described as episodic. Nissen's first intention was to write the novel as a series of linked short stories. She wanted each chapter in the novel to be strong enough to stand on its own. Though she later changed her mind, the original intent remains obvious, as the novel does not follow the normal evolution of a long story, but rather gives a somewhat porthole look at separate episodes in the characters' lives.

As much as Nissen claimed to dislike New York, she was surprised by the reactions of readers, who described her novel as a love story of that city. In an interview with Ron Hogan for Beatrice, Nissen concluded, that maybe she was able to create the novel in a more positive tone, because she had left the city, thus giving her a more objective view.

Quotations: "I think maybe I just needed that perspective to be able to look back and write lovingly about New York."

"New York is such an immense world to immerse yourself in, as you're trying to write about it. But it's not my world. My world is in Iowa, and my mental health can afford for me to open up that New York world in my imagination from here."

Personality

Thisbe Nissen and her husband, Jay Baron Nicorvo, dream, one day, of raising goats.

Connections

Thisbe Nissen is married to Jay Baron Nicorvo, a novelist. They have a son.

husband:

Jay Baron Nicorvo

(born August 21, 1976)

Jay Baron Nicorvo is an American novelist, poet and essayist.

literary agent:

Eric Simonoff

(born July 21, 1967)

Eric Matthew Simonoff is a literary agent at William Morris Endeavor.

References

• Contemporary Authors New Revision Series In response to the escalating need for up-to-date information on writers, Contemporary Authors New Revision Series (Volume 198) brings researchers the most recent data on the world's most popular authors.
  2010