Christina Baker Kline

Christina Baker Kline (born 1964) is an American novelist. She is the author of five novels, including the #1 New York Times bestselling novel Orphan Train, and has co-authored or edited five non-fiction books. Kline is the recipient of several Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation Fellowships and has received numerous other awards.

Background

She was born in Cambridge, England, and raised in Cambridge, in the American South, and in Maine. Kline is a graduate of Yale (BA in English), Cambridge University (MA in Literature), and the University of Virginia (MFA), where she was a Henry Hoyns Fellow in Fiction Writing.^[1]

Writing career

Her short stories, essays and articles have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Star-Ledger", the Literarian, Psychology Today, Portland Monthly Magazine, Coastal Living, More, Inside Jersey, Yale Alumni Magazine, Money, and others.

Teaching career

Kline served as Writer-in-Residence at Fordham University from 2007 to 2011, where she taught graduate and undergraduate creative writing and literature.^[2] She also taught in the Fordham-in-London program at the University of London, Heythrop College. She has taught literature and creative writing at Yale, NYU, the University of Virginia, and Drew University, and has served as Writer-in-Residence at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

Personal

Kline is married to David Kline, who works at Showtime Networks in New York City. They have homes in Montclair, New Jersey and Southwest Harbor, Maine. Their sons Hayden and Will attend college at Yale University and Duke University; Eli is a student at Montclair High School.

Works

Fiction

• Sweet Water (1993)
• Desire Lines (1999)
• The Way Life Should Be (2007)
• Bird in Hand (2009)
• Orphan Train (2013)

Orphan Train

Set on present-day Mount Desert Island, Maine and in Depression-era Minnesota, Kline's fifth novel, Orphan Train, highlights the real-life story of the orphan trains that between 1854 and 1929 carried thousands of orphaned, abandoned, and destitute children from the East Coast to the Midwest.^[3] Kline imagines the journey of one such child, Vivian Daly, an immigrant from Galway County, Ireland, whose fate is determined by luck and chance. Decades later, when Vivian's experiences are far behind her, an at-risk Penobscot Indian foster teen, Molly, must complete community service by cleaning out her attic. As Vivian and Molly work together, they find unlikely common ground.

Since its publication in 2013, Orphan Train has been a bestseller on all the national lists in the U.S.^[4] Foreign rights have been sold in more than 30 countries, and the book has become a #1 international bestseller.^[5] It has been in the top 5 of the New York Times Trade Fiction bestseller list for over a year and there are more than 2 million copies in print.

Non-fiction

• The Conversation Begins: Mothers and Daughters Talk about Living Feminism (1994), with her mother, Christina L. Baker.

As editor

• Child of Mine: Original Essays on Becoming a Mother (1997)
• Room to Grow: Twenty-Two Writers Encounter the Pleasures and Paradoxes of Raising Young Children (1999)
• Always Too Soon: Voices of Support for Those Who Have Lost Both Parents (2006), with Allison Gilbert
• About Face: Women Write about What They See When They Look in the Mirror (2008), with Anne Burt

References

External links

• Official website
• USA Today: 'Orphan Train' on surprise trip up the best-seller list
• Forbes Magazine: How A Veteran Novelist Leveraged Target's Sales Clout And The Hidden Power Of The Paperback To Crack The Bestseller List
• Publishers Weekly: With 'Orphan Train,' Author Finds Bestsellerdom Fifth Time Around
• Fargo Forum: Making a Scene: ‘Orphan Train’ author to visit Fargo
• Money: The Best Gift I Ever Bought Myself