
CB ANDERSON
Writer, Journalist, Educator
— Author of —
River Talk
Home Now:
How 6,000 Refugees Transformed an American Town
Blue Lion Days (forthcoming May 2024)
Image: Drew Hays

—fiction—
C&R Press
—nonfiction—
Perseus PublicAffairs
2020 New York Book Festival
Honorable Mention
Forthcoming May 2024
The Florida Review
Jeanne Leiby Memorial Chapbook Award
"Impeccably well-crafted, unified, [with] a thumping heart at its center." Melanie Bishop, Judge
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 2019 LitHub Fall Preview Pick and a "Briefly Noted" New Yorker selection. 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 will be published in May 2024.
Anderson's fiction has appeared in The Iowa Review, Narrative Magazine, North American Review, Pleiades, Indiana Review, The Masters Review 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.
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. Her work has twice been shortlisted in Best American Essays.
Anderson grew up in Maine and loves ocean swimming, reading, scotch, and the tin whistle. She's taught writing at Boston University, the Chatauqua Institution, Writing Workshops, and the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance, among others. See upcoming workshops and appearances here.
Fellowships/scholarships from Hedgebrook, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, ZYZZYVA, and the AWP/Prague Summer Seminars have supported her work.
credit: Sally Pasley Vargas


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
"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