Mona Awad

Mona Awad (born 1978) writes novels that occupy a distinctive territory between literary fiction and horror — a space where body dysmorphia becomes body horror, where the social dynamics of an MFA program shade into occult ritual, and where fairy tales reveal themselves as the nightmares they always were. Her work is consistently funny, consistently unsettling, and consistently interested in the ways women are encouraged to destroy themselves in pursuit of beauty, thinness, and approval.

Life and Career

Awad was born in Montreal, Canada, to an Egyptian father and a Canadian mother. She holds an MFA from Brown University, and the claustrophobic academic setting of several of her novels draws directly on the hothouse atmosphere of the writing workshop. She has taught creative writing at Syracuse University.

Her debut, 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl (2016), is a linked story collection following Lizzie from her teenage years through adulthood as she battles her weight, her self-image, and the world’s relentless judgment of women’s bodies. It is a sharp, uncomfortable book that refuses to offer the redemptive arc that memoirs and novels about weight typically supply.

Bunny (2019) is her breakout. Set in a prestigious New England MFA program, it follows Samantha, an outsider scholarship student, as she is drawn into the orbit of a clique of wealthy, inseparable women who call each other “Bunny.” The clique is conducting strange rituals in a workshop space, and the novel gradually escalates from social satire into full-blown supernatural horror. Bunny captures something specific about the performance of femininity in literary academia — the weaponized sweetness, the competitive intimacy — and pushes it into genuinely disturbing territory.

All’s Well (2021) recasts Macbeth and All’s Well That Ends Well in a contemporary setting: a former actress suffering from chronic pain who begins to supernaturally transfer her suffering to others. It is Awad’s most explicit engagement with Shakespeare and with the question of who gets to be believed when they say they are in pain.

Rouge (2023) is a Beauty-and-the-Beast retelling filtered through skincare culture, centering on a woman investigating her estranged mother’s death at a luxury beauty spa. It extends Awad’s preoccupation with how women are consumed — by beauty standards, by the beauty industry, by their own desperate desire to be seen as beautiful.

Key Works

• 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl (2016)
• Bunny (2019)
• All’s Well (2021)
• Rouge (2023)

Collecting Awad

13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl first edition (Penguin, 2016) brings $30–$100. Bunny first edition (Viking, 2019) signed brings $50–$150 — it has a cult following and strong word-of-mouth demand. Awad signs at events and festivals. Her market is early-stage; Bunny is the key collectible, and first editions in fine condition are already appreciating. The horror-literary crossover audience means demand extends beyond typical literary fiction collecting circles.