Photo Credit: Dana Damewood
Chris Harding Thornton is a writer from an absurdly long line of Nebraskans. Her first novel, Pickard County Atlas (MCD/Farrar, Straus & Giroux), was chosen by author Tana French (Into the Woods, The Searcher) as a PBS Masterpiece Best Mystery of 2021. The book was featured in the Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and elsewhere. The paperback was released by Picador, and a German translation was published by Polar Verlag in 2022. Her second novel, Little Underworld, released by MCD/Farrar, Straus & Giroux in March 2024, was a USA Today bestseller. Picador released the paperback in March 2025.
Harding Thornton holds a BFA, MFA, and PhD in fiction writing and English.