Lindsay Stern

Stern received a B.A. in English and Philosophy at Amherst College.[2] She graduated with an M.F.A in fiction from the Iowa Writers' Workshop[3] and began a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at Yale University.[4]

Stern published Town of Shadows with Scrambler Books in 2012.[5] She wrote the book while at Amherst College.[6]

Her debut full-length novel, The Study of Animal Languages, was published by Viking in 2019.[7] It follows two professors in a New England campus who are married to each other.[8]

Kirkus Reviews wrote: "Stern’s brittle comedy of highfalutin intellectual theories evolves into a feeling portrait of a gifted man coming face to face with his limitations."[9] Publishers Weekly suggested in a mixed review that the "intellectually teeming prose makes for a thought-provoking novel, though it’s more successful asking questions such as, 'Can voles experience heartbreak?' than depicting people breaking each other’s hearts."[10]

Booklist called it a "jittery, intelligent. . . depiction of relationships in which the parties involved experience a distressing inability to communicate."[11] The New York Journal of Books wrote: "Though she often depends on facile academic stereotypes, Stern reveals the ways in which scientists may try to deploy objective methods, but are ultimately human."[12]

For Washington Independent Review of Books, "What pulls The Study of Animal Languages toward its unexpectedly satisfactory conclusion (though not a by-the-book happy ending) is a series of false steps that require Prue and Ivan to face inner truths that neither character had thought silently to themselves, let alone proclaimed aloud to each other."[13]

Stern writes for Smithsonian Magazine.[14]

• Town of Shadows (Scribler Books, 2012)
• The Study of Animal Languages (Viking, 2019)