Pennsylvania

Authors from Pennsylvania write out of a state of ridges, river towns and old industry, and the listings here reflect that range: memoir, nature writing, investigative reporting and fiction rooted in Pittsburgh and the Appalachian edge.

You will find Augusten Burroughs, Jane Bernstein, Marcia Bonta, Matt Birkbeck and Philip Beard. Pennsylvania writers here tend to stay local in setting even when the subject is national, which is what separates them from authors filed under California or New York.

Augusten Burroughs writes about a childhood spent in western Massachusetts and then in Pennsylvania, and the state's small towns and psychiatric care system shape the memoir voice readers recognize. Jane Bernstein's nonfiction turns on Pittsburgh and its neighborhoods, on family and on the work of raising a daughter with disabilities. Marcia Bonta stays closer to the ridge and the season: her nature writing tracks hawks, wild turkeys and spring wildflowers on a Pennsylvania mountain, and it is read by people who walk the same ground. Matt Birkbeck works in investigative reporting, following cases through the state's courts and small-city police departments. Philip Beard sets fiction in the Pittsburgh region, where steel, football and family loyalty press on his characters. Set against California or New York, where publishing and film dominate, these writers keep a regional scale: a county, a ridge, a river town. West Virginia and North Carolina share the terrain but not the industrial and psychiatric history that runs through these books.