A short life of the author
Lauren Groff (b. 1978) was born on 23 July 1978 in Cooperstown, New York. She studied English at Amherst College and earned an MFA from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She lives in Gainesville, Florida.
Life and Career
The Monsters of Templeton (2008) — a multi-generational novel set in Cooperstown — was her debut. Arcadia (2012) — about a boy raised in a 1970s commune in upstate New York — was Booker-longlisted.
Fates and Furies (2015) — a novel about a marriage, with the first half narrated by the husband (Lotto, a charismatic playwright) and the second by the wife (Mathilde, who has been concealing a radically different version of their life) — was a National Book Award finalist, won the ABA Book of the Year, and was famously named Barack Obama’s favourite novel of 2015. Its structural conceit — the same marriage, told by each partner, revealing how differently two people can experience the same life — gave it both intellectual force and emotional devastation.
Florida (2018) — a story collection set in Groff’s adopted state — was a National Book Award finalist and won the Story Prize. Matrix (2021) — a historical novel about Marie de France, a seventeenth-in-line-to-the-throne noblewoman who is sent to a poor abbey in medieval England and transforms it into a self-sufficient, all-female community — was her most radical novel: a feminist reimagining of medieval monastic life that reads as both historical fiction and contemporary parable.
The Vaster Wilds (2023) — about a servant girl who flees a colonial settlement and walks alone through the American wilderness — was her most formally stripped-down work.
Major Works and Themes
Groff writes about the tension between individual desire and communal obligation — communities that promise utopia and deliver confinement. Her prose is precise, lyrical, and increasingly bold.
Key Works
- Fates and Furies (2015)
- Florida (2018)
- Matrix (2021)
Collecting Groff
The Monsters of Templeton (2008, Voice/Hyperion) — her debut — brings $30–$100.
Fates and Furies (2015, Riverhead) brings $20–$60. Groff signs at literary events.