| Monica West | |
| Nationality: | American |
| Genre: | Fiction |
| Alma Mater: | Duke University, New York University, University of Iowa |
Monica West is an American writer. She is the author of the novel Revival Season, a Barnes & Noble Discover Pick[1] and a finalist for the 2022 Virginia Commonwealth University Cabell First Novelist Award.[2]
West attended Duke University and New York University. She graduated with an M.F.A in fiction from the Iowa Writers' Workshop.[3] [4]
West's debut full-length novel, Revival Season, was published by Simon & Schuster in 2021. It follows a Baptist family as it preaches across the American South.[5] The book was inspired by the novels of Toni Morrison, James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain, Brit Bennett’s The Mothers and Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible,[6] as well as racism in American churches.[7]
Publishers Weekly called Revival Season "explosive" and "essential reading",[8] and The Washington Post, which called it "spellbinding" and West "an author to watch."[9] The New York Times Book Review noted that "West creates a vivid, intimate world on the page, dramatizing the compromises evangelical women must make."[10] For Washington Independent Review of Books, it is "a novel so profoundly well written that it fills a hole readers didn’t even know existed in the canon."[11] Kirkus Reviews wrote: "West gives us a glimpse of an insular world, but it’s not much more than a glimpse."[12] Ploughshares compared the novel to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Purple Hibiscus.[13] Booklist wrote:
"West’s debut is a bold insight into traditional southern Christianity and its contradictions to contemporary perspectives on gender equality. She writes with a melodic cadence that is honest and often heartbreaking. Her characters are three-dimensional people who tug at readers’ emotions."[14]