CB ANDERSON
Writer, Journalist, Educator
— Author of —
River Talk
Home Now:
How 6,000 Refugees Transformed an American Town
Blue Lion Days (out now)
Image: Drew Hays
—fiction—
C&R Press
—nonfiction—
Perseus PublicAffairs
2020 New York Book Festival
Honorable Mention
August 2024
Jeanne Leiby Memorial Chapbook Award
“CB Anderson’s stories are precise, intimate, and open-hearted. [Grand Falls] is in her soul— its people, all its people, and its sorrows and rejuvenations… Blue Lion Days is flat-out gorgeous work.”
—Peter Orner, author of Maggie Brown & Others, Still No Word From You, and eight others.
“CB Anderson crafts such a bountiful world from such spare prose you can't help but marvel at her gifts. I was deeply moved by this collection of linked stories set in a mill town that's gone from boom to bust and is trying to work its way back to boom again… Don't miss this beautiful and important book.”
—Katherine Ozment, author of Grace Without God: The Search for Meaning, Purpose, and Belonging in a Secular Age
“Each story in Blue Lion Days is a perfect, multi-faceted gem. CB Anderson writes with care, intelligence, and reverence for these characters, this town, and the ever-changing river that is its lifeblood. Characters recur, interact, hurt one another, rescue one another, or step back to give one another a chance. When linked together, these stories produce something much bigger, more profound— a work of art about how to make a life.”
—Louie Cronin, author of Everyone Loves You Back
“Hope flows like a river through these moving stories about a New England mill town trying to reinvent itself for the post-industrial age… Grand Falls felt like someplace I knew well. It felt like home.”
—Jendi Reiter, author of Origin Story and Two Natures and editor of WinningWriters.com
IN THE PRESS
“
"This is a powerful and wonderfully insightful book; I can’t imagine a reader who wouldn’t come away moved and illuminated.”
—ANTONYA NELSON, author
River Talk
"A triumphant, probing debut that promises both literary and mass appeal."
—KIRKUS REVIEWS
"Best Books of 2014"
“
“A stellar, fully-realized collection of stories… You come away not only understanding a place but the soul of its people.”
—PETER ORNER, author
"Home Now is immediately relevant and universally resonant, as it illuminates the explosive politics of immigration and explores complex issues around our relationships to places and each other."
—MITCHELL ZUCKOFF, author
Home Now
Lit Hub Fall 2019 Preview Pick
The New Yorker ‘Briefly Noted’
December 2019
2020 IPPY Living Now
Silver medalist
Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance
Best Nonfiction Book finalist
“[Anderson] profiles residents of Lewiston, Maine, in this detailed, sensitive portrait of the city’s revitalization. [Home Now] expertly captures the multilayered dynamics between Lewiston natives and African immigrants…. The result is a vivid and finely tuned portrait of immigration in America.”
—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
BIO
credit: Sally Pasley Vargas
Cynthia (CB) Anderson is a writer, journalist and educator. Her book Home Now: How 6,000 Refugees Transformed an American Town was a 2019 LitHub Fall Preview Pick and a "Briefly Noted" selection in The New Yorker. Her fiction collection River Talk was a Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2014. A story cycle Blue Lion Days received the 2023 Jeanne Leiby Memorial Chapbook Award and was published in August 2024.
Anderson's fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The Iowa Review, Narrative Magazine, North American Review, West Branch, Electric Lit and elsewhere. Prizes include the 2022 Winning Writers Tom Howard Prize for Fiction, the Crazyhorse Fiction Prize, and 2nd place in the Zoetrope: All-Story Fiction Contest. Her nonfiction has appeared in Boston Magazine, Fourth Genre, The Christian Science Monitor, HuffPost, The Miami Herald, and others, and has twice been shortlisted in Best American Essays.
She holds a B.A. in mathematics from Cornell University and an M.S. in journalism from Boston University. Fellowships/scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, ZYZZYVA, and the AWP/Prague Summer Seminars have supported her work.
Anderson lives in Maine with her family and has taught at venues including Boston University, MWPA, and Austin-based Writing Workshops. She loves ocean swimming, a bit of scotch, and karaoke— generally in that order.
See upcoming workshops here.
SELECTED
WORKS
FICTION
"Her Own Heart Within Her" Narrative
"Man and Sky in Daytime" Pangyrus
"Ice Out" The Forge
"Mavak Tov" Indiana Review/LA.Lit
"A Brief History of the Sea" Crazyhorse
"Sylvie" Ocotillo Review
"Blood Ties" 2022 Winning Writers Tom Howard Prize
"Transfinitude" Tupelo Quarterly
"Tourmaline" Crab Orchard Review (p. 1)
FLASH AND MICRO
"Baker's Helper" The Iowa Review
"River, Love" Electric Literature
"Dance Recital for the Men of the American Legion in April" The Iowa Review
"Our Animal Friends" Fugue
"On Octopus Sex and the Moon" Slackjaw
"Everything" SmokeLong Quarterly
"Close to Shore" Brevity
"Watching Mars Explode" Silver Rose
NONFICTION (FEATURE, ESSAY & OP-ED)
"Of Carpenters & Scrabble Kings" The Christian Science Monitor
"Megachurches in New England" Yankee Magazine
"What Would Ada Say?" HuffPost