Liza Palmer Books in Order

Liza Palmer writes contemporary novels about women trying to sort out friendship, family, work, ambition, and the stories they tell themselves. Her books can be funny, messy, romantic, and painful in the same chapter. She also has a knack for putting a character in a job that brings the pressure right to the surface, whether that means a restaurant kitchen, an ad agency, a newsroom, or a tech startup.

Writing was there early. Palmer has recalled making up stories as a child, then losing touch with that part of herself as a teenager. She lasted only a short time in college, and later found her way back to writing through Saturday workshops at Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena, California, while holding down a full-time job.

That practical beginning still fits her work. Her characters are often capable people who feel stuck, overlooked, or unsure how to ask for the life they want.

Her 2005 debut, Conversations with the Fat Girl, introduced Maggie, a twenty-seven-year-old coffee-shop worker facing a changing friendship and a hard look at her own self-worth. The novel put body image, friendship, romance, and self-acceptance in the same room, without pretending any of them were simple.

Palmer kept exploring complicated family ties in Seeing Me Naked, about Los Angeles pastry chef Elisabeth Page, and A Field Guide to Burying Your Parents, which brings estranged siblings back together after their absent father falls ill. Food, work, and family expectations keep showing up in her fiction because they give people plenty to hide behind, and plenty to fight about.

Then came More Like Her, a suburban friendship drama with a dark turning point, and Nowhere But Home, in which a chef returns to a Texas hometown to cook final meals for people on death row. Nowhere But Home won the Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction. Palmer's stories may begin with familiar everyday problems, but they usually make room for shame, grief, loyalty, and the occasional terrible decision.

She also writes with a sharp eye for professional reinvention. In The F Word, celebrity publicist Olivia Morten has built a polished life that starts to crack when someone from high school returns. The Nobodies follows a laid-off journalist who takes an entry-level job at a Los Angeles startup, then finds a story that could change everything.

Palmer has worked beyond the novel page, too. She earned two Emmy nominations for writing on the first season of VH1's Pop Up Video, and she has written Marvel tie-ins including Captain Marvel: Higher, Further, Faster and Avengers: Infinity War: Destiny Arrives.

Her later novels continue to ask what happens when personal history collides with big ambition. Family Reservations centers on a restaurant empire and the three daughters competing beneath its formidable founder. Young Fools turns to a long friendship between two writers, and the rivalry that grows when their careers move in different directions.

Palmer lives in Los Angeles. Her sense of humor is still close at hand, including her running observation that most people there call her Lisa.