CANR

PERSONAL

Born 1969, in Newton, MA; married; children: two sons.

EDUCATION:

Harvard University, B.A., 1990.

ADDRESS

• Home - Westport, MA.
• Agent - Kim Witherspoon, InkWell Management, 521 5th Ave., 26th Fl., New York, NY 10175.

CAREER

Writer and educator. Has taught writing workshops. Member of boards of Boston Book Festival and Gnome Surf (surf therapy organization).

AWARDS:

Massachusetts Book Award, for A Season of Open Water; Mary Lynn Kotz Award for Art in Literature and New England Book Award finalist, both for Georgia.

WRITINGS

• NOVELS
• Moon Tide, Random House (New York, NY), 2003
• A Season of Open Water, Random House (New York, NY), 2005
• Game of Secrets, Random House (New York, NY), 2011
• BIOGRAPHICAL NOVELS
• Georgia: A Novel of Georgia O’Keeffe, Random House (New York, NY), 2016
• Jackie: A Novel of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Random House (New York, NY), 2024

Contributor to National Public Radio (NPR) and to periodicals including Agni, Conjunctions, Harvard Review, Psychology Today, and Virginia Quarterly Review.

SIDELIGHTS

For the setting of her first novel, Dawn Tripp drew on her adopted hometown of Westport, Massachusetts. A native of Newton, Massachusetts, Tripp used to go to Westport during the summers to visit her grandmother. After deciding as an adult to make Westport her home, Tripp searched local bookstores and libraries for historical information on the town. Her research would provide much of the novel’s atmosphere. “Moon Tide was a novel that grew in me over time,” Tripp told Lisa Palmer for an article in the Standard-Times that also appeared at South Coast Today. Tripp added: “In many ways, it grew out of my passion for the landscape here.”

Moon Tide

In Moon Tide, Tripp presents a historical romance focusing on three Westport women: Elizabeth, the matriarchal widow of an Arctic explorer; Elizabeth’s granddaughter Eve, who is traumatized by her own mother’s death; and Maggie, a clairvoyant who falls in love with a rum smuggler. Spanning two decades, Moon Tide traces the women’s lives and loves as they move toward an eventual encounter with the devastating hurricane of 1938. In real life, the 1938 hurricane caused widespread destruction, killing hundreds of people throughout New England.

Critics offered warm praise for Tripp’s debut novel, particularly for the author’s lyrical writing style. “In Tripp’s hands, the storm becomes a complex piece of music that builds note by note, swelling to its deadly crescendo,” wrote Sandra Shea in the Boston Globe. Shea concluded: “Her description is both sensual and visceral.” Joanne Wilkinson, reviewing the novel in Booklist, noted that Tripp is an “unusual stylist” and said: “Haunting, ethereal, and often brutal, her novel achieves the resonance of myth.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor commented that “Tripp writes lovely sentences, but she’s so enamored by the sound of her authorial voice that the characters remain artful constructs without convincing lives of their own.” However, Jo Manning, writing in Library Journal, stated that the “story itself is slow and carefully paced” and noted the author’s “word-heavy, shimmering descriptions” and the “gripping climax.”

A Season of Open Water

Tripp’s second book, A Season of Open Water, is, like its predecessor, set in coastal New England. Set at the height of Prohibition, the different generations of a single family are confronted with the changes of the society around them. At the heart of the family is Noel Dowd, who is reflecting on his life as a whaler and confounded by his strong-willed grandchildren, Bridge and Luce. While their lives are didactically opposed, Dowd and his grandchildren share a connection that becomes strained as the story progresses. Attracted to a faster pace of life, Bridge and Luce begin keeping company with rumrunners—a business they become involved in to try and make money quickly. Unhappy with the idea of spending their lives at difficult, local jobs like their grandfather did, they begin to seek ways of escaping their circumstances.

A reviewer in Kirkus Reviews observed that the novel contains a “nice rhythm” and found the work to have “well-researched languages.” This aspect was also commented on by a critic for Publishers Weekly. The Publishers Weekly reviewer remarked: “Tripp’s impressive research and attention to detail add to the story’s heft.”

Game of Secrets

Tripp continues to use coastal New England as the setting of her third novel, Game of Secrets. Tripp’s highly praised psychological novel uses the game of Scrabble to probe deeper into the nature and complexity of human relationships. The Varick and Weld families have a dark history that began fifty years earlier than the 2004 setting of the novel, when Ada Varick had a passionate extramarital affair with Luce Weld. After Luce disappeared in 1957 and his skull was found three years later with a bullet hole in it, the New England townspeople assumed Ada’s angry and abusive husband, Silas, was responsible for the murder. The unsolved mystery still looms over the present-day when Jane, Luce’s daughter, meets Ada every week on Friday to play a game of Scrabble. Below the surface, the weekly Scrabble games are filled with grief, reflected by the underlying selection of words that are played. Jane, the younger woman at the table, serves as the scorekeeper in a game that provides a distraction from the grim past. The two women hardly ever confront the past that includes the affair and the murder, but instead talk about their children and their game of Scrabble. Jane’s estranged daughter, Marne, and Ada’s son, Ray, fall in love, ultimately propelling Jane to confront the truth of her father’s mysterious death fifty years later.

Overall, the novel achieved positive reviews, mainly focusing on the writing style and the in-depth character studies in the book. Trilla Pando, writing in Story Circle Book Reviews, praised the novel: “This story is realism at its most chilling, and it was very well written.” Kristine Huntley, reviewing the novel in Booklist, considered the book a “gracefully told character study … wrapped up in a taut, suspenseful mystery.” A contributor in Publishers Weekly claimed the book explores the characters “sometimes tediously,” but “the result is a familiar literary soap opera that offers some surprising delights.”

In an interview with Roxane Gay, a contributor to Bookslut, Tripp discussed the thematic question central to Game of Secrets: “How well can we really ever know another person? It can be unsettling, to recognize how many different versions of truth there are.” When asked why the author chose the game of Scrabble to play such a prominent role in her novel, she said: “How we play Scrabble can reveal so much about how we tick, how we live, who we are.” She went on to say: “The game for me became the perfect lens for a story about two families bound together and divided by unspeakable secrets. … Words, and the stories they compromise, bridge time.”

Georgia

In Georgia: A Novel of Georgia O’Keeffe, Tripp takes the real-life love affair between American artist Georgia O’Keeffe and the world-renowned photographer Alfred Stieglitz and turns it into a fictionalized biography. Georgia begins when O’Keeffe is a young woman, teaching in Texas. One of her sketches makes its way to Stieglitz, who is in New York. When they meet, they fall in love. When Stieglitz’s photographs of her nude become a sensation, O’Keeffe attempts to keep her notoriety from the photos separate from her life as an artist. As background material for the book, Tripp uses letters and other writings. Booklist reviewer Cortney Ophoff was impressed with the novel and wrote: “Tripp’s novel clearly takes liberties, but the relative truth painted with them is well worth the straying.”

Other reviewers were equally as positive in their assessments of Georgia. A Kirkus Reviews contributor commented: “Tripp’s portrait makes a compelling primer to O’Keeffe’s early career—and, yes, more than a love story.” A Publishers Weekly reviewer wrote: “Tripp has hit her stride here.” In the Huffington Post, Jesse Kornbluth wrote: “Tripp expertly makes drama of two traditional themes in the O’Keeffe story—the romance with Stieglitz and the development of her art—but it’s the track about her art and his management of it and her struggle not to be dominated by him that makes her novel compelling.” Kornbluth continued: “The book is the worn stones of conjugal life. All that is beautiful, all that is plain, everything that nourishes or causes to wither. It goes on for years, decades, and in the end seems to have passed like things glimpsed from the train … everything that is not written down disappears except for certain imperishable moments, people, and scenes.”

Not everyone was impressed with Georgia, however. Jennifer Levin in the Santa Fe New Mexican wrote: “Tripp is so focused on O’Keeffe’s sex life she forgets her other responsibilities. Character development gets short shrift. We don’t learn basic details such as what characters look like, as if because they are historical figures, they do not need to be evoked physically on the page. We don’t get to know Georgia’s siblings or how she feels about them, though many of them live in New York at the same time she does.” However, like most critics of the work, USA Today Online reviewer Patty Rhule summed up her review by saying: “Erotic and evocative from the first page to the last, Tripp’s Georgia is a romantic yet realistic exploration of the sacrifices one of the foremost artists of the 20th century made for love.”

[open new]

Jackie

Tripp’s next title is another work of biographical fiction, Jackie: A Novel of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. The novel opens with the wrenching scene of President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 assassination, when Jackie was sitting by his side in the Dallas motorcade. With Jackie narrating in the present tense, the scene shifts to their first meeting in 1951, when he was a Massachusetts congressman and she was on the verge of a summer in Europe and a position at Vogue. Courtship leads to marriage, two children, and the presidency, with their relationship often troubled by his affairs. The narrative occasionally shifts to Kennedy’s perspective, enhancing the dramas of his presidency, including the Cuban Missile Crisis and the space race. With grief lingering ever after his death, Jackie proceeds into marriage with Aristotle Onassis and editorial work that proves a satisfying counterpoint to the more passive phases of her memorable life as wife, mother, and first lady.

In Library Journal, Barbara Clark-Greene praised Jackie as “meticulously researched and lyrically written.” She affirmed that Tripp’s “conception of Jackie’s interior life … is incredibly detailed, moving, and poignant,” lending profound insight into a “cultured, charming, and creative” woman. A Kirkus Reviews writer affirmed that Tripp—who includes a lengthy bibliography—“seamlessly” incorporates her research into a narrative that proves “sympathetic “ to the protagonist but not “cloyingly” so. Finding the novel especially enriched by the “close, intelligent, and not always generous attention that Jackie … pays to those around her,” this reviewer hailed Jackie as an “ethereal … elegiac and meticulously crafted ode to a still somewhat mysterious figure.”[close new]

BIOCRIT

PERIODICALS

• Booklist, May 15, 2003, Joanne Wilkinson, review of Moon Tide, p. 164; May 15, 2005, Michele Leber, review of A Season of Open Water, p. 1650; July 1, 2011, Kristine Huntley, review of Game of Secrets, p. 23; January 1, 2016, Cortney Ophoff, review of Georgia: A Novel of Georgia O’Keeffe, p. 47.

• Boston Globe, August 17, 2003, Sandra Shea, review of Moon Tide, p. D6.

• Denver Post, Christine Wald-Hopkins, review of Moon Tide, p. EE2.

• Kirkus Reviews, May 1, 2003, review of Moon Tide, p. 640; May 1, 2005, review of A Season of Open Water, p. 506; May 15, 2024, review of Jackie: A Novel of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

• Library Journal, April 15, 2003, Jo Manning, review of Moon Tide, p. 128; April 15, 2005, Caroline Hallsworth, review of The Season of Open Water, p. 81; March 15, 2016, review of Georgia; May, 2024, Barbara Clark-Greene, review of Jackie, p. 92.

• People, August 4, 2003, review of Moon Tide, p. 41.

• Publishers Weekly, April 28, 2003, review of Moon Tide, p. 43; May 2, 2005, review of A Season of Open Water, p. 175; April 18, 2011, review of Game of Secrets, p. 29.

ONLINE

• Bitchy Reader Book Reviews, http://bitchyreader.blogspot.com/ (March 14, 2012), review of Game of Secrets.

• Bookloons, http://www.bookloons.com/ (April 12, 2012), Hilary Williamson, review of Game of Secrets.

• Bookslut, http://www.bookslut.com/ (March 1, 2012), Roxane Gay, “An Interview with Dawn Tripp.”

• Dawn Tripp website, https://www.dawntripp.com (June 16, 2024).

• Herald News, http://www.heraldnews.com/ (June 25, 2011), Linda Murphy, “Mystery Woman: Dawn Tripp’s Latest Novel Interwoven with Local Lore.”

• Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ (February 7, 2016), Jesse Kornbluth, review of Georgia.

• Psychology Today, http://www.psychologytoday.com/ (April 12, 2012), Jennifer Haupt, “Life’s Questions, Big and Small.”

• Publishers Weekly, http://www.publishersweekly.com/ (March 9, 2017), review of Georgia.

• Santa Fe New Mexican, http://www.santafenewmexican.com/ (March 11, 2016), Jennifer Levin, review of Georgia.

• South Coast Today, http://www.southcoasttoday.com/ (June 3, 2003), Lisa Palmer, “A Rising ‘Tide.’”

• Story Circle Book Reviews, http://www.storycirclebookreviews.org/ (August 18, 2011), Trilla Pando, review of Game of Secrets.

• USA Today, http://www.usatoday.com/ (February 7, 2016), Patty Rhule, review of Georgia.