About

Tess’s debut novel, The Rabbit Hutch, is a New York Times Bestseller and the recipient of the 2022 National Book Award for Fiction. It has been translated into a dozen languages. The novel also received the Barnes and Noble Discover Prize, the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize, and the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. It was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award, and the British Book Award for Debut Fiction, The Rabbit Hutch was named one of twelve Essential Reads by The New Yorker, and a best book of the year by The New York Times, People, TIME, Oprah Daily, LitHub, the Chicago Tribune, Kirkus, and NPR. It is currently a finalist for the inaugural Inside Literary Prize and the Open Bank Vanity Fair Award for best new author in Spain. The novel has been optioned for film rights by Richard Brown (executive producer of True Detective, Outlaw King, and Catch-22) and Fremantle (Poor Things, Priscilla, My Brilliant Friend, Normal People). Tess is the youngest recipient of the National Book Award for fiction since Philip Roth won in 1960.

In addition to being published by Knopf in North America, The Rabbit Hutch is published by Oneworld (UK, Australia, India), Gallmeister (France), Guanda (Italy), Black Button Books (Romania), Kiepenheuer and Witsch (Germany), Kagge (Norway), Sexto Piso (Spain), Edicions de 1984 (Catalan), EunHaeng NaMu (South Korea), Kinneret Publishing House (Israel), Wydawnictwo Czarne (Poland), Jelenkor Publishing (Hungary), and Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial (Portugal).

Tess’s older brother, Nicholas Gunty, created the illustrations featured in The Rabbit Hutch. Based in Philadelphia, Nicholas is a visual artist, musician, and independent music producer. He is available for commission.

Tess holds an MFA in creative writing from New York University, where she was a Lillian Vernon Fellow and a Graduate Institute Research Fellow in Paris. She studied English with an honors concentration in creative writing at the University of Notre Dame, where she won the Ernest Sandeen Award for her poetry collection and graduated magna cum laude. She spent her sophomore year in Angers, France, studying French language and culture at l’Université catholique de l’Ouest. Recently, she was a Paul La Farge fellow at MacDowell, where she worked on her second novel. Tess grew up in South Bend, Indiana. She currently lives between Los Angeles and New York.

Inquiries:

Literary Agent: Duvall Osteen, UTA

• duvall.osteen@unitedtalent.com

Film/TV Agent: Brooke Ehrlich, CAA

• brooke.ehrlich@caa.com

Literary Publicist: Emily Reardon, Knopf

• ereardon@penguinrandomhouse.com

Speaking Engagements: Madeleine Denman, Penguin Random House Speakers Bureau

• mdenman@penguinrandomhouse.com