
CB ANDERSON
Writer, Journalist, Educator
Author of
Home Now
How 6,000 Refugees Transformed an American Town
River Talk
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

Cynthia (CB) Anderson is a writer, journalist and educator. Her book Home Now: How 6,000 Refugees Transformed an American Town was a "Briefly Noted" selection in The New Yorker and received honorable mention in the 2020 New York Book Festival. Her collection River Talk was a Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2014 and received the 2014 New England Book Festival award for Short Stories.
Anderson's fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The Iowa Review, Narrative Magazine, North American Review, Pangyrus, Hayden's Ferry, Indiana Review, Tupelo Quarterly, The Masters Review and elsewhere. Prizes include the 2022 Winning Writers Tom Howard Prize for Fiction, the New Millennium Award, the Crazyhorse Fiction Prize, and 2nd place in the Zoetrope: All-Story Fiction Contest.
She holds a B.A. in mathematics from Cornell University and an M.S. in journalism from Boston University. Features and op-eds have appeared in Boston Magazine, CNN, The Christian Science Monitor, HuffPost, The Miami Herald, Forbes, Fourth Genre and others. Essays have twice been shortlisted in Best American Essays.
Anderson regularly offers workshops online and in-person throughout the U.S. Fellowships/scholarships from Hedgebrook, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, ZYZZYVA, and the AWP/Prague Summer Seminars have supported her work.
She grew up in western Maine in the foothills of the White Mountains. Currently she lives in Maine and Boston, and teaches writing at Boston University. She loves ocean swimming, reading, scotch, and the tin whistle.


SELECTED
WORKS
FICTION
"Man and Sky in Daytime" Pangyrus
"Mavak Tov" Indiana Review/LA.Lit
"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
"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