This is how we wrote our books.
It’s time to finish yours, too.
We were stuck.
In 2018, both stalled out on our second books, we had an idea.
Annie had encountered an essay by Aimee Bender about a contract she’d drafted to hold herself accountable to finishing her book. Tessa was into it. We each drafted a contract, committing to word counts and daily email check-ins, and became accountability partners.
Annie’s second novel, UNLIKELY ANIMALS, came out with Random House in April 2022, and Tessa’s second book, THE RED GROVE, is forthcoming with FSG in May 2024.
The contract worked.
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Annie Hartnett
Annie Hartnett is the author of novels RABBIT CAKE (Tin House Books, 2017) and UNLIKELY ANIMALS (Ballantine/Random House, 2022).
Unlikely Animals was listed as one of the best books of 2022 by the Washington Post and BookRiot. It was the winner of the 2023 Julia Ward Howe prize for fiction, and was longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. It was the April 2022 book club selection for Good Housekeeping magazine and Amerie’s Book club. It received starred reviews from Booklist and Bookpage, and was an April Indie Next pick.
Rabbit Cake was listed as one of Kirkus Reviews' Best Books of 2017, was a finalist for the New England Book Award, an Indies Introduce and an Indie Next Pick, and was long-listed for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize. It received starred reviews from Publisher's Weekly, Kirkus, and Library Journal, and was People magazine's Book of the Week. It is currently under option with Amazon Studios (more on that here!).
Annie has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the MacDowell Colony, Sewanee Writers' Conference, and the Associates of the Boston Public Library. She holds degrees from the MFA program at the University of Alabama, Middlebury College's Bread Loaf School of English, and Hamilton College. She lives in Massachusetts with her husband, daughter, and dog.
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Tessa Fontaine
Tessa Fontaine is the author of The Electric Woman: A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts, A New York Times Editors' Choice; A Southern Living Best Book of 2018; An Amazon Editors' Best Book of 2018; A Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick; A Refinery29 Best Book of 2018; A New York Post Most Unforgettable Book of 2018.
Her debut novel, The Red Grove, is forthcoming from FSG in May 2024.
Tessa spent the 2013 season performing with the last American traveling circus sideshow, the World of Wonders. An essay about the sideshow won the 2016 AWP Intro Award in Nonfiction. Her writing can be found in Outside , The New York Times, Glamour, The Believer, AGNI, Brick, LitHub, Creative Nonfiction, Seneca Review, DIAGRAM, and more.
Raised outside San Francisco, Tessa got her MFA from the University of Alabama. She's received awards and fellowships from Tin House, The Sewanee Writers' Conference, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, The Taft Nicholson Center, Writing by Writers, and Squaw Valley Community of Writers. Tessa taught in prisons and jails for five years, and was a professor of creative writing at Warren Wilson College, in addition to guest teaching at dozens of other colleges and universities around the country. She has guided students on the New York Times summer journeys, and founded Salt Lake City’s Writers in the Schools program. She currently lives in Asheville, North Carolina, with her husband, daughter, derpy dog and classy cat.
Around the country, she has performed her one-woman plays in theaters ranging from New York to San Francisco. The scar on her cheek from a 2am whip act is slowly fading.