Marie-Helene Bertino is the author of the novels Beautyland, Parakeet, and 2 a.m. at the Cat's Pajamas, and the short story collections Safe as Houses and Exit Zero. Her novel Beautyland was an American Book Award winner, a National Book Critics Circle Finalist, a New York Times Notable 100 and Time Magazine Top 10 Book of 2024. A 2025 Guggenheim Fellow in Fiction, she has received two O. Henry Prizes, the Pushcart Prize, The Iowa Short Fiction Award, and The Frank O'Connor International Short Story Fellowship in Cork, Ireland. In June 2021, "Disrupting Realism," an online master class and panel she designed to make graduate level resources available at no charge, was attended by 1,300 people. She has taught for NYU, The New School, and Institute for American Indian Arts, and is currently the Ritvo-Slifka Writer-in-Residence at Yale University.
Marie-Helene Bertino
Studios
MacDowell
Marie-Helene Bertino worked in the MacDowell studio.
Built in 1912, Pine Studio was renamed MacDowell Studio in 1943 in recognition of support from a group of Edward MacDowell’s music students. It was built as a composers’ studio and the stuccoed walls were intended to be soundproof. Like many of the studios on property, MacDowell was winterized in the 1950s when the program began welcoming…