Cris Beam

Cris Beam is an author of both fiction and nonfiction: her latest book is I Feel You: The Surprising Power of Extreme Empathy, which was released by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2018. Her prior book, To the End of June: The Intimate Life of American Foster Care (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013), was a New York Times Notable Book and was shortlisted for the William Saroyan Prize. Her first book, Transparent (Harcourt, 2007), received a Lambda Literary award and a Stonewall Honor, and her second, I Am J (Little, Brown, 2011), was both a Kirkus and American Library Association Best Book and a Junior Library Guild Selection. Her work has appeared on This American Life and in The New York Times, The Atavist, The Huffington Post, The Awl, and The Guardian, among others. She has an MFA from Columbia has taught creative writing at Columbia, NYU, and Bayview Women’s Correctional Facility.