Lorraine Adams is an Americanjournalist andnovelist. As a journalist, she is known as a contributor to theNew York Times Book Review, and a former contributor toThe Washington Post. As a novelist, she is known for the award-winningHarbor and its follow-up,The Room and the Chair.

Lorraine Adams graduated magna cum laude with an A.B. in English fromPrinceton University in 1981 after completing a 76-page-long senior thesis titled "The Hero inEzra Pound'sCantos."^[1] She then attendedColumbia University, graduating with an M.A. in English and American Literature in 1982.^[2]

She was a staff writer forThe Washington Post,^[3] andThe Dallas Morning News.

She regularly contributes to theNew York Times Book Review, and is a fellow at theJohn Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.^[4][5]

Adams andDan Malone ofThe Dallas Morning News shared the 1992Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting, citing "reporting that charged Texas police with extensive misconduct and abuses of power", including rights violations.^[2][6]

Her first novel was published in 2004,Harbor, featuringNorth AfricanArab stowaways.^[7] It won accolades includingLos Angeles Times Award for First Fiction,Virginia Commonwealth University First Novelist Award, andEntertainment Weekly Best Novel of 2004, and it made the New York Times Best Books of 2004 list.

Her second novel,The Room and the Chair, was published in 2010 and details the life of an American fighter pilot. The German-language edition isCrash (Zürich: Arche, 2011).^[8]

Amy Wilentz, reviewingThe Room and the Chair in theLos Angeles Times, stated, "Lorraine Adams is a singular and important American writer.The Room and the Chair establishes this without question: It is remarkable for its ambitions and its achievements. It's a war novel, a reporter's novel and a psychological thriller. It encompasses the broadest outlines of our world. It is also Adams' second novel, and it is gutsier and throws a wider net than the topical and gorgeously writtenHarbor, her first. Both books are about U.S. involvement in the Middle East, about psychological and political blowback, about what happens when you wage a war and then suddenly it slaps you back, blindsides you."^[9]

Adams lives in Harlem, New York and is married to the novelistRichard Price.^[10]

• 1992Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting^[2]
• 2006 VCU First Novelist Award^[11]
• 2010Guggenheim Fellowship^[12]

• "Almost Famous",^[13]Washington Monthly, April 2002
• Harbor,^[14] Random House, Inc., 2005,ISBN 978-1-4000-7688-8
• The Room and the Chair, Knopf, 2010,ISBN 978-0-307-27241-6
• NYC 22 "Block Party" July 2012^{[clarification needed]}

• "Turning Secret Intelligence to Fiction",The Wall Street Journal, ALEXANDRA ALTER, FEBRUARY 3, 2010
• "Five Debut Novelists. One Rock 'n' Reading Tour.",Powell's
• "The Leonard Lopate Show",WNYC, March 18, 2010
• "Up Front",The New York Times, THE EDITORS, May 18, 2008
• "Love, etc.: Authors Richard Price and Lorraine Adams wed",The Washington Post, The Reliable Source, May 20, 2012