Caitlin Barasch Books in Order

Caitlin Barasch was born and raised in New York, in a family where making things was part of daily life. She has described a childhood full of creative projects, from collages with her mother and brother to writing poems with her father.

That kind of home gave her room to take writing seriously early on.

Barasch earned her BA from Colorado College, then returned to New York for an MFA at New York University. Before her debut novel arrived, she worked as a bookseller and built a body of short fiction published in journals including Day One, Catapult, The Forge, and Hobart. She has also taught creative writing, a job that keeps her close to the practical, sometimes messy work of getting words onto the page.

Her earlier work includes The Spiral, a short story about Ashley, a recent graduate living with her family while worrying that mental illness runs in her blood. Ashley tries to test the limits of her own sanity by staying awake, and the story follows her as exhaustion makes the line between fear and reality less clear.

In 2022, Barasch published her debut novel, A Novel Obsession. It follows Naomi Ackerman, a twenty-four-year-old New York bookseller who wants badly to write a novel but cannot find a subject that feels big enough. When Naomi learns that her new boyfriend Caleb’s former girlfriend, Rosemary, still lives nearby and works in publishing, curiosity turns into fixation. Naomi begins following Rosemary online, then creates a friendship built on omissions while using the experience as material for her own book.

It is a setup with plenty of bad decisions waiting to happen.

The idea for A Novel Obsession grew from a familiar insecurity: learning unexpected details about a partner’s past relationship and wondering how you compare. Barasch turns that uneasy feeling into a story about jealousy, ambition, intimacy, and the stories people make up about themselves. Her characters often want connection and self-understanding, but their attempts to get both can become controlling, reckless, or painful for the people around them.

Readers who like flawed narrators and uncomfortable social dynamics will find that thread running through her work. Barasch is interested in obsession as both a destructive force and a source of creative energy. Writing itself matters in her fiction, not as a tidy escape but as something that can reveal a person’s wants, blind spots, and need to shape experience into a story.

Alongside her fiction, Barasch teaches creative writing at the Writers Circle and has worked as a visiting assistant professor at Colorado College. Her work stays close to New York, relationships, and the complicated things people do when they are afraid of being ordinary, alone, or misunderstood.