Alice Hoffman

Alice Hoffman is an American author who has published more than thirty novels and story collections over a career spanning nearly fifty years. Born in New York City in 1952, she studied at Adelphi University and received an MFA from Stanford University. Her fiction seamlessly blends realism with magical and fairy-tale elements, creating a distinctive form of literary magical realism set primarily in New England. Hoffman's most celebrated novels include Practical Magic (1995), which was adapted into a popular film starring Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman; The Dovekeepers (2011), a historical novel about the siege of Masada; The Marriage of Opposites (2015); The World That We Knew (2019), a novel set during the Holocaust about a Jewish mother who creates a golem to protect her daughter; and The Witch of Blackbird Pond (for younger readers). The World That We Knew won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Fiction in 2020. Hoffman's work is noted for its sensuous prose, its exploration of family bonds and female friendship, and its compassionate treatment of loss, grief, and resilience. She is also the author of several acclaimed young adult and middle grade novels. She lives in Massachusetts.