Hanna Pylväinen

Hanna Pylväinen is the winner of a Whiting Award and author of the novels We Sinners and The End of Drum-Time. National Book Award winner Jaimy Gordon called We Sinners "A début of dazzling economy, precision, and reach." The Chicago praised it as “a resonant and magical work of imagination.” And in USA Today, “A moving story [that] offers grace, insight, and compassion.”

Plyväinen’s new novel is The End of Drum-Time (Henry Holt, 2023), which Julia Phillips called “infinitely rich and rewarding.” Set in 1851 in a remote village in the Scandinavian tundra, it is the story of an ill-fated love affair between a renegade preacher’s daughter and a young deer herder.  Bestselling author Anthony Marra hails it for “some of the most gorgeous prose imaginable and an extraordinary feat of imagination.” Yiyun Lee says of Plyväinen, she is “one of the most unique voices in American literature.”  NPR’s Scott Simon interviewed Pylväinen about The End of Drum-Time on Weekend Edition.

Plyväinen’s work has appeared in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Harper’s, The Chicago Tribune, and elsewhere. She received her MFA from the University of Michigan and has received fellowships from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, Princeton University, and Cullman Center for Scholars and Writing. She is on the faculty of the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers.