Carol Edgarian is an award-winning novelist, essayist, teacher, editor and literary citizen. Her novels include the forthcoming Vera (Scribner, March 2, 2021), the New York Times bestseller Three Stages of Amazement, and the international bestseller Rise the Euphrates, hailed by The Washington Post as a book “whose generosity of spirit, intelligence, humanity and ambition are what literature ought to be and rarely is today.” Rise the Euphrates was awarded the ANC Freedom Prize, and a twentieth-anniversary revised edition of the novel was released to mark the centennial of the Armenian Genocide. 

Carol’s articles and essays have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, NPR, and W, among many other places, and she coedited The Writer’s life: Intimate Thoughts on Work, Love, Inspiration, and Fame from the Diaries of the World’s Great Writers. She is a frequent speaker at conferences and schools on topics such as “Why Stories Matter,” “The Art of Fiction” and publishing today.

In 2003 Carol and her husband, Tom Jenks, founded the nonprofit Narrative, a leading digital publisher of fiction, poetry, essays, and art. Dedicated to encouraging reading without paywalls, and to supporting writers by paying them fairly for their work, Narrative publishes hundreds of artists each year and is widely read across generations, in schools, and around the globe. Its entire digital library of thousands of works of literature by celebrated authors and by the best emerging writers is available for free.

Six years ago, Carol launched Narrative in the Schools, programs that augment Narrative’s library of literature with free video tutorials, lesson plans, a writing contest for high schoolers, and other essential tools for teachers and students in underserved communities around the world. She is a proud mentor to some amazing young writers.

Born in New Britain, Connecticut, to first-generation American parents, Carol grew up in the neighboring towns of West Hartford and Glastonbury. She is a graduate of Phillips Andover and Stanford University. After college, while drafting her first novel, she worked as a reporter and freelance writer of speeches, technical manuals, and copy for the high-tech nerds, lawyers, and titans who were inventing Silicon Valley. Channeling the thoughts and language of others proved excellent training for a novelist.

When Carol left the East Coast for college, she promised her father she’d be back in four years. She has lived in her adopted hometown of San Francisco for more than three decades. She and her husband have three daughters.