November 2024
Eleanor has been awarded a 2025 Support for Artists grant from the New York State Council on the Arts for the development of The Galaxy: A Novel. Big thanks to Community Arts Partner of Tompkins County for sponsoring her application!
Eleanor published a review of Nora Lange’s Us Fools in the New York Times Book Review, calling it a “tender, exquisitely funny and supremely strange debut novel.”
October 2024
Eleanor’s AWP panel on writing about animals has been accepted for the March 2025 conference in Los Angeles. See the Events page for more details.
August 2024
Eleanor has been awarded a 2024 NYSCA/NYFA Fellowship in Fiction for her work on The Galaxy, a novel forthcoming from Flatiron Books.
November 2023
Eleanor has an essay, “The Great Indoorsmen,” in Critical Hits: Writers Playing Video Games, edited by Carmen Maria Machado and J. Robert Lennon (Graywolf).
July 2023
Eleanor’s review of Kate Zambreno’s memoir The Light Room appeared in the New York Times Book Review.
May 2023
Eleanor has been promoted to Full Professor at Ithaca College (!).
November 2021
Vogue has named Everything I Have Is Yours one of the Best Books to Read in 2021.
Everything I Have Is Yours is a New York Times Notable Book! “[An] unflinching memoir of her husband’s long and confounding illness. She tells their story with a novelist’s eye for detail and the honesty of a trusted friend.”
September 2021
Eleanor’s review of Christopher Sorrentino’s memoir Now Beacon, Now Sea appeared in the New York Times Book Review.
Eleanor talked to Jane Roper for The Zeitgeist, a Mighty Blaze show.
Eleanor talked to Zibby Owens for her podcast Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books about, among other things, why she loves reading books that break her heart.
August 2021
Eleanor talked with Sara Shuklah at Dead Darlings about the power of bearing witness and Ethan Hawke’s shirts, and with Chris Holmes of Burned By Books about what’s under the iceberg.
Eleanor wrote about women’s memoirs at the intersection of chronic illness, mental illness, addiction, and trauma for LitHub.
Elisabeth Egan of The New York Times has selected Everything I Have Is Yours for its Group Text book club! “[Henderson] gracefully executes a triple toe loop (as a wife, a mother and a caregiver), then nails the landing with humor and a certain offbeat panache…the generosity of Henderson’s memoir will melt your icy heart.”
Kate Tuttle featured Eleanor in the Story Behind the Book column for The Boston Globe.
Zibby Owens has included Everything on her roundup of 15 Books to Add to Your Summer Reading List on GMA.com and ABC News.
Bitch has included it in their list of 13 Books Feminists Should Read in August, describing it as “a harrowing memoir about a marriage in turmoil that asks a lot of questions but offers no easy answers.”
Booklist has given Everything a starred review. “This piercing memoir…takes readers deep inside an enduring, painful marriage. Moving with supple grace between past and present…she describes each scene and segment of their life in precise, delicate detail.”
Amazon has chosen Everything I Have Is Yours as one of its Best Books of August! “No one wishes for their relationship’s mettle to be tested in such dramatic fashion, and this story challenges us to confront what we’d be willing to endure before crying uncle. But it’s also a portrait of that rare thing: a love so durable, and maybe slightly mad, that ensures that you won’t.”
July 2021
Shelf Awareness calls Everything I Have Is Yours “wrenching, immersive” and “a love story as blisteringly beautiful as it is truthful.”
A starred review in Library Journal! “Henderson’s deeper exploration of the nature of marriage itself and how physical and mental illness test and expand the boundaries of love and trust…[is] an intimate, absorbing, and painful look at chronic illness in a relationship.”
EIHIY is included in Lit Hub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2021, Part Two; Vogue‘s Best Books to Read This Summer; and a roundup of alumni books from UVA Today.
June 2021
Kirkus calls Everything I Have Is Yours a “memoir of interest to anyone copying with a loved one’s struggle with illness and dependency….[Henderson’s] prose is all fine turns of phrase with the rawest of nerve endings.”
The first review of Everything I Have Is Yours, from Molly Sprayregen for Associated Press, is a lovely one! “Henderson’s writing will pull at your every heart string…Everything I Have Is Yours is above all else, the story of a marriage that, like any, is filled with both an abundance of love and an abundance of obstacles….Hers is the story of two people determined to overcome the hand that has been dealt to them, two people who love each other so deeply that they refuse to let anything tear them apart.”
November 2020
Eleanor’s memoir, Everything I Have Is Yours: A Marriage, will be published by Flatiron Books in August 2021.
October 2020
Eleanor published an essay, “The Year of No Halloween,” in Salon.
June 2020
Eleanor reviewed Brian Castleberry’s debut novel Nine Shiny Objects for The New York Times Book Review.
May 2020
Eleanor talked with the Burned by Books podcast about writing and teaching during the pandemic, The Outsiders, Robert Cohen, and seeing Ten Thousand Saints made into a movie.
January 2020
Eleanor talked with the How Writers Write podcast about early mornings, the art of time, and her writing bathrobe.
November 2019
Ten Thousand Saints, published way back in 2011, received an honorable mention for LitHub’s 20 Best Novels of the Decade!
September 2019
Eleanor talked to Edan Lepucki and Amelia Morris of the awesome podcast Mom Rage five years after the publication of Labor Day, the anthology of birth stories she edited with Anna Solomon.
March 2019
Eleanor reviewed Taylor Jenkins Reid’s novel Daisy Jones & the Six for The New York Times Book Review.
September 2018
The Twelve-Mile Straight is out in paperback!
January 2018
The Twelve-Mile Straight has been published by 4th Estate in the UK, and The Daily Mail calls it “nuanced and compassionate.”
October 2017
The San Francisco Chronicle publishes a rave review of The Twelve-Mile Straight, calling it a “superb novel.”
The Twelve-Mile Straight is featured in the October issue of O, The Oprah Magazine, which calls it a “superb novel, whose roots can be traced to Harper Lee and Carson McCullers.”
Eleanor reviewed Celeste Ng’s novel Little Fires Everywhere for The New York Times Book Review.
September 2017
Eleanor talked to The Millions about fiction, film, appropriation, point of view, and privilege.
The Seattle Times calls The Twelve-Mile Straight “a masterful piece of storytelling that probes issues of injustice and race.”
Eleanor was featured in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which calls The Twelve-Mile Straight “an absorbing epic.”
An interview and review in NYLON about The Twelve-Mile Straight, which it calls “an essential read” and “epic in scale and intent.”
On pub day, Eleanor talked to Jonathan Capehart of WNYC’s Leonard Lopate Show about the Jim Crow South and writing The Twelve-Mile Straight.
The Twelve-Mile Straight is on shelves as of September 12!
Philly.com calls The Twelve-Mile Straight “beautifully told, beautifully written, a story that penetrates to the American heart, and all the light and darkness therein.”
The Twelve-Mile Straight is on the October Indie Next list.
Entertainment Weekly includes The Twelve-Mile Straight on its list of 20 Books to Read This Fall.
The Twelve-Mile Straight has been named an Amazon Best Book of September.
August 2017
Eleanor talked to HarperAcademic about identify, belief, and secrets for their new podcast.
You can now listen to the first chapter of the audiobook version of The Twelve-Mile Straight, narrated by Allyson Johnson, courtesy of HarperAudio London.
The Twelve-Mile Straight is coming to the UK in January 2018 from 4th Estate in this beautiful take on the US cover.
July 2017
The Millions was kind enough to include The Twelve-Mile Straight on this absurdly rich list of forthcoming books.
June 2017
Ten Thousand Saints is getting a face lift! Ecco is releasing the third paperback edition of Eleanor’s first novel in coordination with the release of The Twelve-Mile Straight on September 12th. Like The Twelve-Mile Straight, this one’s illustrated by the talented Sara Wood.
May 2017
Eleanor just returned from trips to the West and the South to meet with awesome indie booksellers, including these lovely folks at Kimball House in Decatur, Georgia.
November 2016
Diecimila Santi, the Italian edition of Ten Thousand Saints, is out. Translated by Vanessa Valentinuzzi, published by Romanzo Bompiani, sexier in every way.
October 2016
Eleanor talked to Vulture about Atari, legwarmers, and “That ’80s Show.”
August 2016
You can now listen to Eleanor’s panel on book-to-movie adaptations with the wonderful Stephen Elliott, Jennifer Gilmore, Jenny Halper, and Cheryl Strayed on the AWP Podcast Series.
October 2015
Ten Thousand Saints is out on DVD! You can buy it on DVD or Blu-Ray, or you can buy or rent it via instant video here.
August 2015
Ten Thousand Saints the movie is out! Catch it at a theater near you or see it now on demand at iTunes and everywhere movies are sold.
Some nice new film reviews of Ten Thousand Saints, including this one from The New York Times, who call it “a very fine film.”