Dara Horn


Dara Horn is an American novelist and professor of literature.

Early life and education

Horn was born in New Jersey in 1977, grew up in Short Hills, New Jersey, and attended Millburn High School. Her mother, Susan, was an English teacher with a doctorate. Horn's father, Matthew, is a dentist who learned Chinese history at Temple University. When Horn was 14 she won a trip to Poland and Israel when she finished first in a competition about Israeli history. Upon her return to the US her essay that she wrote for Hadassah Magazine about her trip was nominated for a National Magazine Award in 1993.
She received her BA in comparative literature, summa cum laude, in 1999 and her Ph.D. in comparative literature in Hebrew and Yiddish in 2006, both from Harvard University. She finished her master's degree in Hebrew literature at Cambridge University.

Career

She taught classes in Jewish literature and Israeli history at Sarah Lawrence College and the City University of New York. She held the Weinstock visiting professorship in Jewish Studies at Harvard, teaching Yiddish and Hebrew literature. Horn served as a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Yeshiva University during the 2019-2020 academic year. She has also been a contributor to the New York Times and The Atlantic.

Novels

Her first novel, In the Image, published by W. W. Norton when she was 25, received a 2003 National Jewish Book Award, the 2002 Edward Lewis Wallant Award, and the 2003 Reform Judaism Fiction Prize.
Her second novel, The World to Come, published by W. W. Norton in January 2006, received the 2006 National Jewish Book Award for Fiction, the 2007 Harold U. Ribalow Prize, was selected as an Editors' Choice in The New York Times Book Review and as one of the Best Books of 2006 by the San Francisco Chronicle, and has been translated into eleven languages.
Her third novel, All Other Nights, published in April 2009 by W. W. Norton, was selected as an Editors' Choice in the New York Times Book Review.
Her fourth novel, A Guide for the Perplexed, was published in September 2013.
Horn's fifth novel, Eternal Life, was published in January 2018 by W. W. Norton. It was selected as one of The New York Times' 100 Notable Books of 2018.

Personal life

She lives with her husband, daughter, and three sons in Short Hills. Horn has one brother and two sisters.

Honors