Sharon Harrigan writes for both children and adults. She is the author of the novel Half (2020) and the memoir Playing with Dynamite (2017). She won the 2020 Sarah Pennybacker Fellowship from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts to finish a chapter book series called Lizzie Bee. Other children’s books in progress include The Biggest Dog in Paris (Because of Winn Dixie meets The Elegance of the Hedgehog) and Bird Boy (about two neurodiverse teens and a rescue barred owl).
Half is a 2021 Michigan Notable Book, the Library of Michigan’s “judgment on the best books of the preceding year.” Cleaver magazine called Playing with Dynamite “intoxicatingly relatable” and LitReactor wrote, “This is the kind of memoir that will increase your emotional IQ.”
Sharon Harrigan has a B.A. in English from Barnard College, Columbia University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Pacific University. Her essays and stories have been published widely, in such places as the New York Times (Modern Love), Virginia Quarterly Review, and Real Simple. She teaches writing at WriterHouse in Charlottesville, where she lives with her family.