CANR
WORK TITLE: The Art of Vanishing
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://nycbookgirl.com/
CITY: New York
STATE:
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY:
LAST VOLUME:
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born in Summit, NJ; married: Dylan.
EDUCATION:Duke University, B.A., 2016.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Marketer. Jill Furman Productions, theatrical production assistant, 2016-19; NYC Book Girl, founder and content creator, 2017-; Atria Books, director of marketing and social media, 2022-.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
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Morgan Pager is a Duke University graduate, a marketing director in publishing, and the founder and content creator of NYC Book Girl. After almost a decade in the business, she wrote her own novel, which was published in 2025.
The Art of Vanishing is a romantic novel with a twist. It is about the love story between a young female employee at an art museum and the man in a painting that she becomes obsessed with. She soon discovers that she can enter the world of the painting, and she explores its setting and begins an affair with the painting’s subject. Along with the tale of romance, Pager also explores the themes of art, love, and time.
Reviewers were taken with this debut. A writer in Kirkus Reviews called it a “charming story.” They praised Pager for how she “evokes her protagonist’s deep relationship to art.” In Publishers Weekly, a reviewer described the novel as “whimsical and beguiling.” They were particularly taken with the “deeply satisfying” and “beautiful” romance at the center of the novel. They also called it a “Phantom Tollbooth for grown-ups,” in how it portrays the world on the other side of the painting.
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BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, May 1, 2025, review of The Art of Vanishing.
Publishers Weekly, May 5, 2025, review of The Art of Vanishing. p. 34.
ONLINE
Duke University, Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, English Department website, https://english.duke.edu/ (November 10, 2025), author bio.
Morgan (Holt) Pager website, https://nycbookgirl.com/ (November 10, 2025).
Morgan (Hoit) Pager is the Marketing and Social Media Director at Atria Books and the bookworm and content creator behind @nycbookgirl. Born and raised in Summit, New Jersey, she attended Kent Place School and graduated in 2012. From there, she was off to Duke University to double major in English and Theater Studies, class of 2016. In the summer of 2016, Morgan moved to New York City to pursue a career in theatrical producing.
From 2016 to 2019, Morgan worked as an associate at Jill Furman productions, where she assisted in the producing of new plays and musicals. In the summer of 2017, she launched @nycbookgirl, an online platform for her to share what she was reading and her life in NYC. In 2019, Morgan accepted a Marketing Manager position at Avid Reader Press, where she was the voice of their social media and worked on marketing campaigns including Three Women, The Only Plane in the Sky, Group, and Infinite Country. She then joined the marketing team at Ballantine Bantam and Dell as a Senior Marketing Manager, where she managed campaigns for authors such as Rachel Lindsay, Josie Silver, and Stephanie Foo.
In April 2022, Morgan joined the team at Atria Books, where she oversees Atria’s marketing department and social media platforms.
Morgan lives on the Upper West Side with her husband, Dylan, and their cat, Cleo. She loves planners, Soulcycle, iced pistachio lattes with oat milk, cooking, yoga, catching up with friends, playing board games, and walking absolutely everywhere. She is a Virgo.
Morgan( Hoit) Pager
Director Marketing & Social Media, Atria Books, Simon & Schuster
Class Year
2016
Professional Background
I joined the team at Atria Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, as the Associate Director of Social Media in April 2022. I oversee all of Atria's social media accounts, spearheading growth across platforms including Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook, as well as consulting on campaigns for Atria titles. I was previously at Random House, where I managed campaigns for authors such as Rachel Lindsay, Josie Silver, and Stephanie Foo. I began my career in publishing at Avid Reader Press, where I was the voice of their social media and worked on titles including The Only Plane in the Sky, Group, Three Women, and Infinite Country. Before publishing, I worked as an Associate at Jill Furman Productions, where I assisted in the producing of new plays and musicals. I am also the content creator and bookworm behind the Instagram account @nycbookgirl.
How has your English degree from Duke shaped your work life?
My English degree was a true highlight of my Duke experience. From the intimate and animated classes to the enthusiastic, passionate professors, it is a department like no other. My English degree taught me how to translate what I was reading to a variety of audiences (how to talk about a work to a professor, to a classmate, to the author themselves). Some classes emphasized how to look at the larger context of the author's life and the world around them (everything I took with Professor Strandberg), while others examined the magic of adaptation and inspiration (Professor Beckwith's course on Shakespeare's The Winters Tale remains my favorite class I've ever been a part of). The English department taught me how to communicate effectively and concisely, and gave me an outlet for my love of stories. I'm so fortunate to have that space mirrored in my professional life.
LinkedIn Profile:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/morgan-pager-64bb8690/
Professional Project:
@nycbookgirl
The Art of Vanishing
Morgan Pager. Ballantine, $30 (304p)
ISBN 978-0-593-87538-4
Pager debuts with the charming story of a magical portal between a 1917 Matisse painting and present-day Philadelphia. It begins when Claire, a 21-year-old janitor at an unnamed museum, becomes fixated on Matisse's The Music Lesson. Having somehow crossed into the world of the painting, she falls in love with one of its subjects, Matisse's older son, Jean, a young man who has been watching Claire from the painting and has feelings for her, too. With Jean, Claire enters more of the museum's paintings from the period, and while inhabiting these works, they embark on an exciting romance. Halfway through, Pager reveals a secret that Claire has been keeping about her life in Philadelphia, but before she gets a chance to share it with Jean, the museum is shuttered by a pandemic, and she loses access to him. When the museum reopens a few months later, the stage is set for a hackneyed plot twist involving the discovery and subsequent theft of a journal written by a woman painter from the early 20th century. Still, Pager effectively peels back the curtain on the museum's inner workings and evokes her protagonist's deep relationship to art. There's plenty here to admire. Agent: Ariele Fredman, UTA. (July)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2025 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"The Art of Vanishing." Publishers Weekly, vol. 272, no. 18, 5 May 2025, p. 34. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A838974265/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=622ac7d1. Accessed 18 Oct. 2025.
Pager, Morgan THE ART OF VANISHING Ballantine (Fiction None) $30.00 7, 1 ISBN: 9780593875384
This love affair starts with a meet-cute at a museum, then slips the tiresome restraints of reality altogether.
"She was Elizabeth Bennet in a janitorial uniform and I, Fitzwilliam Darcy in oil on canvas": This seemingly outlandish assertion summarizes the premise of Pager's debut. We are being addressed by Jean Matisse, who lives with two of his siblings and his mom in a painting by his father, Henri. The "Elizabeth Bennet" in question is Claire, a new night-shift cleaning person at a private museum seemingly modeled on the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, where hundreds of paintings are hung edge to edge in a giant mansion. Ever since she was a little girl, Claire's had the feeling that there's a way to cross over into the world of a painted image, and she's about to find out she's right. Later, after the pair has fallen in love: "We played cards with Cézanne's farmhands, shot the breeze with Seurat's models, and swam in the Mediterranean Sea." As the subjects of the paintings skip from one canvas to the next to get some variety in their frozen lives, one of the most popular hangouts is "Le bonheur de vivre," a Matisse which depicts a clothing-optional seaside bacchanal. This escapist adventure and beautiful love affair is deeply satisfying, almost therapeutic, for young Claire, who has a lot of responsibilities and complications in the real world. At one point, she starts to realize she could be missing important calls while she's over there in La La Land. "Of course there's no cell reception in--what year is it in this painting?" "1905 or 1906, I think." In addition to the details of Claire's backstory, Pager throws two big real-world developments into the mix--Covid-19 and a museum heist. But the real joy of this book is the world she has invented on the other side of the canvas, a kind ofPhantom Tollbooth for grown-ups.
Whimsical and beguiling.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2025 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Pager, Morgan: THE ART OF VANISHING." Kirkus Reviews, 1 May 2025. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A837325685/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=16317a5b. Accessed 18 Oct. 2025.