Therese Anne Fowler Books in Order

Therese Anne Fowler was born in western Illinois. She lived there until a move with her then-husband took her to Clark Air Base in the Philippines, then later made homes in northern Minnesota and central Wisconsin. In 1995, she settled in North Carolina.

Her road to writing wasn't straight. In her thirties, as a single parent raising two young sons, Fowler went back to college because she wanted a stronger foundation for her family and better work choices. For a time, she supported them by selling used cars. In 1997, she enrolled at North Carolina State University.

She studied sociology and cultural anthropology, graduating summa cum laude in 2000. While finishing that degree, she wrote her first creative piece, a short story inspired by a Robert Heinlein story about a family traveling to the moon. It showed her that fiction might be more than a private interest.

Fowler moved from sociology toward fiction.

She entered graduate school intending to earn a doctorate, then transferred into NC State's MFA program in creative writing. She had a lot of catching up to do, coming from a different academic world, but writing became the work she wanted to pursue. At NC State, she also met novelist John Kessel, whom she later married.

Her debut, Souvenir, arrived in 2008, followed by Reunion in 2009 and Exposure in 2011. These contemporary novels put families, young love, illness, regret, and public judgment under pressure. Souvenir looks at an old love tested by illness, while Exposure follows two teenagers whose private relationship turns into a frightening legal crisis.

Then came Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald in 2013. Fowler turned toward Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald's life, beginning with Zelda's meeting with F. Scott Fitzgerald in Alabama and following the marriage, fame, strain, and artistic ambitions that followed. The book became a bestseller and later inspired the television drama Z: The Beginning of Everything, where Fowler had a producer credit.

Fowler kept writing about women whose polished public lives can hide difficult choices. A Well-Behaved Woman follows Alva Vanderbilt through Gilded Age social battles and private bargains. A Good Neighborhood shifts to a North Carolina suburb, where a property dispute and a teenage romance expose tensions around race, class, and power.

Her 2022 novel, It All Comes Down to This, brings three adult sisters to a Maine summer cottage as their mother prepares them for a future without her. Across Fowler's books, relationships are rarely simple. Family loyalties, reinvention, private secrets, and the gap between appearance and reality keep pulling her characters into hard conversations.

North Carolina has been her home for decades, and she continues to write there with Kessel. Her next historical novel, Perilous Beautiful World, is scheduled for release in 2027.