Katie Coyle

Coyle's Vivian Apple books follow the 16-year-old protagonist as she remains on earth after an apparent rapture in which thousands of adults disappear, including her parents.[3] The first Vivian Apple book was published in the UK in 2013 by Hot Key Books as Vivian Versus the Apocalypse. Coyle began writing the novel while in graduate school; she first developed the character in a short story for her MFA program.[4] Coyle learned of the Young Writer’s Prize, sponsored by Hot Key and The Guardian,[5] for an unrepresented author under 25 and entered the competition in 2012 primarily as incentive to make progress on her draft; ultimately she won the prize,[6] a publishing deal worth 10,000 British pounds.[5] In 2014, Rolling Stone named Vivian Versus the Apocalypse to a list of the 40 "most essential" books of the YA genre[7] and the novel was republished in the US by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2014 under the title Vivian Apple at the End of the World.[8][9] A sequel followed in 2015, also with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, entitled Vivian Apple Needs a Miracle.[10][11] Cosmopolitan named Vivian Apple Needs a Miracle to a 2015 list of "24 New Books Every Twentysomething Woman Needs to Read This Fall".[12]

In 2015, Coyle's story "Fear Itself", originally written in graduate school and published in One Story,[4] was collected in the Best American Nonrequired Reading anthology.[13] The story was also awarded a 2016 Pushcart Prize.[14]