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Bruce Holsinger

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Bruce Holsinger

Goodreads Author


Born
in Fairfax, VA, The United States
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April 2013

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Bruce Holsinger is the author of five novels, including Culpability (forthcoming from Spiegel & Grau), The Displacements and The Gifted School (both from Riverhead), and many works of nonfiction, most recently On Parchment: Animals, Archives, and the Making of Culture from Herodotus to the Digital Age (Yale University Press). His books have been recognized with the Colorado Book Award, the John Hurt Fisher Prize, the Philip Brett Award, the John Nicholas Brown Prize, the Modern Language Association's Prize for a First Book, and others. His essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, and many other publications and he has been profiled on NPR's Weekend Edition, Here & Now, and Marketplace. He is the recipient of a Gu ...more

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Bruce Holsinger My third novel will be a contemporary family drama set in the fictional town of Crystal, Colorado. Title: THE GIFTED SCHOOL, out in July 2019 from Riv…moreMy third novel will be a contemporary family drama set in the fictional town of Crystal, Colorado. Title: THE GIFTED SCHOOL, out in July 2019 from Riverhead/Penguin Random House.(less)
Bruce Holsinger Thanks for the kind words, Manoushka. Ah, Simon Gower! I've had lots of questions about him. He makes an important appearance in "The Invention of Fir…moreThanks for the kind words, Manoushka. Ah, Simon Gower! I've had lots of questions about him. He makes an important appearance in "The Invention of Fire" (no spoilers)...and that's all I'll say at the moment. I'll tell you that the relationship between Gower and his son is one I've thought about a lot--it represents Gower's only familiar connection, as his friendship with Chaucer is a much more consistent part of his emotional life, I suppose. Glad you were provoked to answer the question, though!(less)
Average rating: 3.88 · 104,335 ratings · 12,621 reviews · 18 distinct worksSimilar authors
Culpability

4.04 avg rating — 48,911 ratings — published 2025 — 6 editions
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The Gifted School

3.71 avg rating — 42,108 ratings — published 2019 — 18 editions
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The Displacements

3.97 avg rating — 7,278 ratings — published 2022 — 15 editions
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A Burnable Book (John Gower...

3.55 avg rating — 4,574 ratings — published 2014 — 13 editions
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The Invention of Fire (John...

3.87 avg rating — 1,363 ratings — published 2015 — 18 editions
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Culpability

4.05 avg rating — 37 ratings — published 2025
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Neomedievalism, Neoconserva...

really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 26 ratings — published 2007 — 3 editions
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A Burnable Book: Free Sampler

3.29 avg rating — 28 ratings
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Music, Body, and Desire in ...

3.89 avg rating — 18 ratings — published 2001 — 5 editions
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On Parchment: Animals, Arch...

4.25 avg rating — 16 ratings — published 2023 — 2 editions
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A Burnable Book The Invention of Fire
(2 books)
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  The United States of America is an awfully big place. Sensibly, we chopped it into states a long time ago. This simplifies...
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Bruce’s Recent Updates

Bruce Holsinger answered Brenda Walkey's question: Bruce Holsinger
Thanks for the question, Brenda. I was inspired by a number of things--a family escape to the Chesapeake Bay, my obsession with questions of autonomy, my interest in AI as a teacher...I talk in a lot of detail about this in the interviews with Oprah, See Full Answer
Bruce Holsinger wants to read
The Lost Book of Elizabeth Barton by Jennifer N. Brown
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Bruce Holsinger answered a question about Culpability:
Culpability by Bruce Holsinger
It's a great question! I kept it deliberately ambiguous--I wanted it to be feasibly set six months from now, two years from now...the very, very, very near future, I suppose you could say, just like The Displacements.
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Culpability by Bruce Holsinger
Culpability
by Bruce Holsinger (Goodreads Author)
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Quotes by Bruce Holsinger  (?)
Quotes are added by the Goodreads community and are not verified by Goodreads. (Learn more)

“Insidious, these false versions of superiority and ease we project onto other families: how often they blind us to the surer comforts of our own.”
Bruce Holsinger, The Gifted School

“You must convince your readers that your characters are flesh and blood rather than words on dead skin, that their loves and hatreds and passions are as deep and present as the readers' own. Your task is to delight, to pleasure, to lift your reader to another sphere of being and then strand him there, floating above the earth and panting for more lines.”
Bruce Holsinger, A Burnable Book

“You’ll be a lot less obsessed with what people think of you when you understand how infrequently they do.”
Bruce Holsinger, The Gifted School

Polls

One Book For April 2018

Two Rivers Two Rivers by T. Greenwood by T. Greenwood
In Two Rivers, Vermont, Harper Montgomery is living a life overshadowed by grief and guilt. Since the death of his wife, Betsy, twelve years earlier, Harper has narrowed his world to working at the local railroad and raising his daughter, Shelly, the best way he knows how. Still wracked with sorrow over the loss of his life-long love and plagued by his role in a brutal, long-ago crime, he wants only to make amends for his past mistakes.
 
  6 votes 50.0%

A Burnable Book A Burnable Book (John Gower, #1) by Bruce Holsinger by Bruce Holsinger
In Chaucer’s London, betrayal, murder and intrigue swirl around the existence of a prophetic book that foretells the deaths of England’s kings. A Burnable Book is an irresistible thriller, reminiscent of classics like An Instance of the Fingerpost, The Name of the Rose and The Crimson Petal and the White.
 
  3 votes 25.0%

Imaginary Things Imaginary Things by Andrea Lochen by Andrea Lochen
Watching children play and invent whimsical games of fantasy is one of life's great joys. But what if you could actually see your child's imagination as it unfolded? And what would you do if your child's imagination suddenly became dark and threatening?
 
  1 vote 8.3%

Meg Meg (MEG, #1) by Steve Alten by Steve Alten

On a top-secret dive into the Pacific Ocean's deepest canyon, Jonas Taylor found himself face-to-face with the largest and most ferocious predator in the history of the animal kingdom. The sole survivor of the mission, Taylor is haunted by what he's sure he saw but still can't prove exists - Carcharodon megalodon, the massive mother of the great white shark. The average prehistoric Meg weighs in at twenty tons and could tear apart a Tyrannosaurus rex in seconds. Taylor spends years theorizing, lecturing, and writing about the possibility that Meg still feeds at the deepest levels of the sea. But it takes an old friend in need to get him to return to the water, and a hotshot female submarine pilot to dare him back into a high-tech miniature sub. Diving deeper than he ever has before, Taylor will face terror like he's never imagined. MEG is about to surface. When she does, nothing and no one is going to be safe, and Jonas must face his greatest fear once again.
 
  1 vote 8.3%

The People We Hate at the Wedding The People We Hate at the Wedding by Grant Ginder by Grant Ginder
Relationships are awful. They'll kill you, right up to the point where they start saving your life.

Paul and Alice’s half-sister Eloise is getting married! In London! There will be fancy hotels, dinners at “it” restaurants and a reception at a country estate complete with tea lights and embroidered cloth napkins.
They couldn’t hate it more.
 
  1 vote 8.3%

Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons by Lorna Landvik by Lorna Landvik
The women of Freesia Court are convinced that there is nothing good coffee, delectable desserts, and a strong shoulder can’t fix. Laughter is the glue that holds them together—the foundation of a book group they call AHEB (Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons), an unofficial “club” that becomes much more. It becomes a lifeline. Holding on through forty eventful years, there’s Faith, a lonely mother of twins who harbors a terrible secret that has condemned her to living a lie; big, beautiful Audrey, the resident sex queen who knows that with good posture and an attitude you can get away with anything; Merit, the shy doctor’s wife with the face of an angel and the private hell of an abusive husband; Kari, a wise woman with a wonderful laugh who knows the greatest gifts appear after life’s fiercest storms; and finally, Slip, a tiny spitfire of a woman who isn’t afraid to look trouble straight in the eye.
 
  0 votes 0.0%

12 total votes
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