Marisa Silver

Marisa Silver is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel, Mary Coin (published by Blue Rider Press, March 7th, 2013).

Marisa Silver directed her first film, Old Enough, while she studied at Harvard University. The film won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 1984, when Silver was 23. Silver went on to direct three more feature films, Permanent Record (1988), with Keanu Reeves, Vital Signs (1990) and He Said, She Said (1991), with Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth Perkins. The latter was co-directed with her husband-to-be, Ken Kwapis.

After making her career in Hollywood, she switched her profession and entered graduate school to become a short story writer. Her first short story appeared in The New Yorker magazine in 2000 and subsequently several more stories have been published there.

Silver also published the short-story collection, Babe in Paradise, in 2001. That collection was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and was a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year. A story from the collection was included in The Best American Short Stories 2000. In 2005, she published No Direction Home and in 2008, The God of War was published to great acclaim.