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Hester Kaplan is a writer, teacher, and editor, and the author of novels and story collections, including The Edge of Marriage, winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. Twice Born (Catapult, October 14, 2025) is her first book-length work of nonfiction.
Handsell readers your book with a handful of words:
An intimate literary memoir about a daughter coming to understand her famous biographer father through reading his work, and an exploration of family, identity, and the art of writing.
On your nightstand now:
I usually have a few books going at the same time. Right now, I'm reading A Marriage at Sea by Sophie Elmhirst. This nonfiction reads like a novel, and combines two of my favorite topics--marriage and being lost at sea, both experiences of unpredictable weather, the need for adaptability, and running out of ideas for dinner. I'm also dipping into After Lives, a beautiful collection of essays about biography by Megan Marshall.
Favorite book when you were a child:
As a young kid, I loved the All-of-a-Kind Family series by Sydney Taylor, about a large Jewish family living in a Manhattan's Lower East Side in 1912. Cramped tenement living and the immigrant struggle never looked so rosy. I was also captivated by the Malory Towers series by Enid Blyton, about a girls' boarding school in England. A little older, much of my reading diet consisted of Charles Dickens and Judith Krantz.
Your top five authors:
My favorite authors change all the time and often happen to be the ones I'm reading at the time. I can chart my changing interests, writing, and self through my ever-shifting reading tastes.
Book you've faked reading:
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville. Now that I've admitted it, I'm going to go back and give it another try.
Book you're an evangelist for:
Books instead of book:
The Feast of Love by Charles Baxter for its expansive empathy and heart.
Independence Day by Richard Ford for its voice, humor, sadness, and the need for urgency in a novel.
The Age of Grief (stories) by Jane Smiley for its appreciation of the huge impact of small moments between people.
Book you've bought for the cover:
Jaws by Peter Benchley. Who could resist?
Book you hid from your parents:
None. They encouraged me to read everything and anything. But there were some things I read in private, like The Passion Flower Hotel by Rosalind Erskine (pen name for Roger Erskine Longrigg) about a group of girls at an English boarding school who set up what is essentially a sex service for their male classmates. (Who knew I had such a thing for stories set in English boarding schools?) This book was a far cry from the Malory Towers books, and frankly, filthy and delightful stuff.
Book that changed your life:
A book didn't change my life, but a short story did. I was about 13 when my mother gave me a story from the New Yorker to read. I don't remember who it was by, what it was called, or even what it was about, but there was a passage describing asphalt sparkling in an empty parking lot on a hot summer day. I was struck by lightning when I realized I know exactly what that is, and it makes me feel deep melancholy in a way I can't explain. I was in awe from that moment on of the power of a written description to generate an emotional response in the reader--and it was what I wanted to do.
Favorite line from a book:
"Life is short, and full of sorrows, and I loved it," from The Confessions of Max Tivoli by Andrew Sean Greer. I intend to say it with my last breath.
Five (three) books you'll never part with:
Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain because it was the first book my father, Justin Kaplan, ever wrote and the subject of my new book.
ShrinkLits: 70 of the World's Towering Classics Cut Down to Size by Maurice Sagoff because the word play is magical and reminds me to not take things too seriously.
The Stories of John Cheever because a beautifully crafted short story is a work of art to be admired over and over.
Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin. A great read if you're pregnant.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
A Passage to India by E.M. Forster because everything is revealed. And because if the Marabar Caves were real, I'd be there in a minute.