Laurie Frankel
Laurie Frankel
Laurie Frankel is the New York Times bestselling, award-winning author of six novels, including her latest Enormous Wings, as well as Family Family, One Two Three, This Is How It Always Is, Goodbye For Now, and The Atlas of Love. Her writing has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and other publications. She is the recipient of the Washington State Book Award and the Endeavor Award. Her novels have been translated into more than twenty-five languages, optioned for film and television, and selected for nationwide book clubs such as Reese’s Book Club and Target.
A former college professor, Frankel has taught a wide range of classes from introductory creative writing to advanced Shakespeare, playwriting to gender studies. She’s a gifted teacher and enthusiastic, engaging speaker and is particularly adept at tailoring lectures, discussions, and workshops. She customizes presentations for audiences brand new to a topic versus writers and readers looking to deepen their knowledge or practice, for intimate small group sessions versus audiences that fill ballrooms, and anything in between.
Though Laurie Frankel now writes full-time, she continues to teach at a variety of writing retreats, workshops, conferences, and non-profit organizations. She is an inspiring and sought-after speaker for groups large and small on a wide range of topics and is happy to work with your group to determine how to best meet your needs and cater to your audience.
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Hardcover
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From the beloved New York Times bestselling author Laurie Frankel, an exuberant and timely new novel
At seventy-seven, Pepper Mills is too old to be a stranger in a strange land. She didn’t choose the Vista View Retirement Community of Austin, Texas—that would be her three grown children—but when she grudgingly moves in, sh...
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Trade Paperback
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“Not all stories of adoption are stories of pain and regret. Not even most of them. Why don’t we ever get that movie?”...
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Hardback
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“Not all stories of adoption are stories of pain and regret. Not even most of them. Why don’t we ever get that movie?”...
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Trade Paperback
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Nothing puts love and friendship to the test quite like a baby...
When Jill becomes both pregnant and single at the end of one spring semester, she and her two closest friends plunge into an experiment in tri-parenting, tri-schooling, and tri-habitating as grad students in Seattle. Naturally, everything goes wrong, but in ways no one sees coming...
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Trade Paperback
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From Laurie Frankel, the New York Times bestselling author of This Is How It Always Is, a Reese's Book Club x Hello Sunshine Book Pick, comes One Two Three, a timely, topical novel about love and family that will make you laugh and cry...and laugh again.
In a town where nothing ever changes, suddenly everything doe...
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Trade Paperback
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New York Times Bestseller
The Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club Pick
“Every once in a while, I read a book that opens my eyes in a way I never expected.” —Reese Witherspoon (Reese’s Book Club x Hello Sunshine book pick)
People Magazine’s Top 10 Books of 20...
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The Atlas of Love
Frankel’s debut tells the story of three graduate students who raise a baby together. She can speak about non-traditional families, academia, the through-lines between her debut and her growing body of work, and how to write a first novel (with no contacts, no experience, and no idea what she was doing)
Goodbye For Now
Frankel’s second novel, way ahead of its time when it was published in 2012, imagined using AI and LLMs to chat with the dead. She can talk about AI – in work, society, art, and life – and how it feels to win the Endeavor Award for Science Fiction for her warnings against imagined technology that later came true.
This Is How It Always Is
A Reese’s Book Club pick and winner of the Washington State Book Award, This Is How It Always Is tells the story of a family with five boys, the youngest of whom becomes a girl. She can speak to transgender issues and politics specifically, LGBT+ issues generally, and, even more broadly, family, education, and policy through gendered lenses on these fronts and beyond and how they have changed – and are continuing to change – since this book’s release in 2017.
One Two Three
Frankel’s most structurally-complex novel is narrated, in the round, by three sixteen-year-old sisters. A fictional response to a 2016 article about a class-action lawsuit waged by a town downstream from a chemical plant that had been knowingly and catastrophically polluting their water, One Two Three considers what an abused town looks like a generation later. Frankel can speak to issues of disability rights, universal design, environmental abuse, corporate malfeasance, and writing fiction about real people in real places.
Family Family
So many stories about adoption are stories of misery and tragedy. An adoptive mother herself, Frankel wrote Family Family to tell a different story about adoption, one which explored both the challenges and joys of many different kinds of adoptive families. At its heart is India Allwood, birth mother, adoptive mother, movie star, and social media whipping-post. Frankel can talk about adoption and adoptive families, as well as the challenges of writing and making art while mothering and being a public figure.
Enormous Wings
This “hilarious and humane” novel tells the story of a seventy-seven-year-old grandmother who moves into a retirement community, falls in love, and then falls ill, but when she goes to the doctor, she finds out she’s not sick; she’s pregnant. Frankel can speak to elder care, choice (on many fronts), bodily autonomy, women’s rights, grandmother-granddaughter relationships, and what happens when shifting abortion legislation means you have to throw out your entire novel and start over again from scratch (repeatedly).
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“The Best Books of Spring 2026”
“6 Great Audiobooks to listen to this Month”
The Writing Table with Kris Clink: “Laurie Frankel: On Writing and Families”
The Reader’s Couch: “Ep. 175 Family Family by Laurie Frankel”
Family Family is The New York Public Library’s Book of the Day
“The scary reason my ‘contemporary’ novel suddenly became ‘historical'”
“15 new books to read for the new year”
“Laurie Frankel: We adopted by choice not necessity”
“From He to She in First Grade”
“From He To She In First Grade | With Jennifer Beals”
“‘This Is How It Always Is’ Was Inspired By Its Author’s Transgender Child”
Check out Laurie’s personal website and follow her on Twitter.
“Laurie’s presentation was simply fantastic. She was thoughtful, kind and funny. She presented the themes of her book so that every person watching could make a personal connection to the story. I’m confident that by the conclusion of the program all of our guests felt inspired by her message.”
— Roz Topolski, Community Engagement Program Coordinator, Vernon Area Public Library District
Praise for ENORMOUS WINGS
“Hilarious and humane, this big-hearted book captures the urgent state of women’s rights post-Dobbs.”
— Ms. Magazine
“Only the fearless, funny, and endlessly inventive Frankel could have written this one-of-a-kind yet amazingly down-to-earth book about a woman’s right to choose.”
— Oprah Daily
“Brilliantly makes the impossible plausible, intricately collaging questionable medical treatments, geriatric sexuality, teenage pregnancy, women’s fertility and autonomy, religious and political oversteps, and so much more. . . . Frankel is poised (again) to make plenty of readers uncomfortable while also offering entertainment and illumination.”
— Booklist (starred review)
“In the hands of a lesser writer, this story would flounder, but Frankel’s deft understanding of nuance makes each argument, interaction, and forced conversation between the characters into an epiphany for modern readers to ponder and appreciate. VERDICT: An unusual premise, supported by great writing, makes this novel work.”
— Library Journal
“Frankel blends humor and gravitas in her portrait of an expectant mother who’s also facing her own mortality. Fans of the author’s quirky family stories about hot-button issues will find much to enjoy.”
— Publishers Weekly
Praise for FAMILY FAMILY
“Highly recommended for fans of Frankel and those who enjoy literary fiction featuring witty dialogue and thought-provoking topics.”
— Library Journal, starred review“…Frankel offers a hilarious and sobering view of adoptive parenting through her portrayals of the cheerful and honest India and Rebecca’s open-minded adoptive mother…this is great fun.”
— Publishers Weekly“Frankel finds the truth of modern family within the sparkly, funny characters….Suggest this warmhearted tale to readers of Jennifer Weiner.”
— Booklist“A very unusual, and very Frankel, adoption story….Kevin Wilson fans who haven’t yet tried Frankel should…Full of warmth, humor, and sound advice.”
— KirkusPraise for ONE TWO THREE
“Frankel has given us another socially conscious 21st-century fable in a voice that is part pastor, part political speechwriter, and part Fannie Flagg. Clever, charming, and always on message.”
— Kirkus Reviews“I loved One Two Three from start to finish. What you always get with a Laurie Frankel novel is an engrossing plot—she’s a terrific storyteller—but for me the best part of any of her novels are the three-dimensional characters she’s created, characters for whom she has empathy and palpable affection, characters who seem to leap off the page and into the heart of the reader. And that’s never been more evident than in One Two Three. I highly recommend it—it’s a book that will immediately draw you in and provide great reading pleasure.”
— Nancy Pearl, author of the Book Lust series and George & Lizzie“In One Two Three, Laurie Frankel’s signature wit, warmth, and fierce compassion shine with the story of three courageous, memorable triplets. I loved this book from the first line to the last.”
— Marilyn Dahl, Shelf AwarenessPraise for This is how it Always is
“It’s early days, but this big-hearted novel about a family with a transgender child is in the lead for the most sensitively and sincerely told story of 2017. Frankel’s portrayal of even the most openhearted parents’ doubts and fears around a child’s gender identity elevates this novel.”
— PEOPLE, “Book of the Week”“Deeply satisfying…An intimate family story…Day-to-day parenting dilemmas are where Frankel shines.”
— The New York Times Book Review“Brave, complicated, occasionally horrifying and frequently very funny…Frankel is a first-rate storyteller.”
— Seattle Times“Every once in a while, I read a book that opens my eyes in a way I never expected.”
— Reese Witherspoon, (Reese’s Book Club x Hello Sunshine book pick)“It made me laugh, it made me cry, it made me think.”
— Liane Moriarty, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Big Little Lies
