Short Bio
Ann Fraistat is an author, playwright, and narrative designer. Her debut novel, What We Harvest, is out now with Delacorte Press. Her co-author credits include plays such as Romeo & Juliet: Choose Your Own Ending, and alternate reality games sponsored by the National Science Foundation. She lives in Maryland.
Extended Bio
Ann Fraistat is an author, playwright, and narrative designer. Her debut novel, What We Harvest, was an ABA Indies Introduce and Kids' Indie Next Pick, and a finalist for the Barnes & Noble YA 2022 Book Awards. Her co-author credits include plays such as Romeo & Juliet: Choose Your Own Ending, and alternate reality games sponsored by the National Science Foundation. Born and raised in Maryland, Ann has a B.A. in theatre and English from the University of Maryland and is a graduate of NYU’s Summer Publishing Institute.
Aboutwhat we harvest
YA SUPERNATURAL THRILLER
Delacorte Press | Release Date: 3.15.22
For fans of Wilder Girls comes a nightmarish debut guaranteed to keep you up through the night, about an idyllic small town poisoned by its past, and one girl who must fight the strange disease that's slowly claiming everyone she loves.
Wren owes everything she has to her home, Hollow’s End, a centuries-old, picture perfect American town. Tourists travel miles to marvel at its miracle crops, including the shimmering, iridescent wheat of Wren’s family farm. Until five months ago.
That’s when the quicksilver blight first surfaced, poisoning the farms of Hollow’s End one by one. It began by consuming the crops--thick, silver sludge bleeding from the earth. Next were the animals. Infected livestock and wild creatures alike staggered off into the woods by day—only to return at night, their eyes, fogged white, leering from the trees.
Then, the blight came for the neighbors.
Wren is among the last locals standing. And the blight has finally come for her, too. Now, the only one she can turn to is the last person she wants to call: her ex, Derek. They haven’t spoken in months, but Wren and Derek still have one thing in common—Hollow’s End means everything to them. Only there’s much they don’t know about their hometown and its renowned miracle crops. And they’re about to discover that miracles aren’t free.
Their ancestors have an awful lot to pay for, and Wren and Derek are the only ones left to settle old debts.
Cover Art: Marcela Bolívar
Designers: Alison Impey & Neil Swaab
Praise for WHAT WE HARVEST
✦ Bram Stoker Awards Nominee for Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel, 2022
✦ Barnes & Noble YA Book Award Shortlist, 2022
✦ Indies Introduce, Winter/Spring 2022 Season
✦ Kids' Indie Next, February/March 2022
✦ YALSA 2023 Best Fiction for Young Adults List
✦ YALSA 2023 Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers List
✦ "Intense, gripping, and deeply haunting."
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
✦ “Clever, grotesque, and oozing with atmosphere, What We Harvest is a delightful, page-turning debut. Fraistat masterfully blends horror, fantasy, and science into a tale brimming with slow-creeping dread and explosive, long-buried secrets. I devoured it in one sitting.”
—Allison Saft, author of Down Comes the Night
✦ “Eerie and beautiful, What We Harvest is a novel that will sink into your roots before it devours you whole. Fraistat’s prose is both lyrical and haunting, and she crafts a story that breaks your heart and heals it in equal turns. Horrifying but ultimately hopeful, this novel will be horror readers’ next obsession.”
—Courtney Gould, author of The Dead and the Dark
✦ “A vivid and engrossing horror-tinged tale of magic and corrosive family secrets”
—Kirkus Reviews
✦ “Fraistat’s debut is richly detailed and pulsing with harrowing suspense…Recommend to fans of Rory Power’s Wilder Girls or Claire Legrand’s Sawkill Girls. This atmospheric tale of zombies and rotting legacies is riveting.”
—School Library Journal
✦ “Dazzling and dreadful. What We Harvest grabbed me by the throat and wouldn’t let go.”
—Erin A. Craig, New York Times bestselling author of House of Salt and Sorrows
✦ “Fraistat proves a deft hand at both slow-burn suspense and body horror…an engrossing read.”
—The Bulletin
✦ “Fast-paced and oh-so-creepy, with a festering secret at its center, What We Harvest is the rural zombie novel I never knew I wanted.”
—Erica Waters, author of Ghost Wood Song and The River Has Teeth
✦ “Unputdownable, unforgettable, and gorgeously written. A must-read book.”
—Ashley Winstead, author of In My Dreams I Hold a Knife
✦ “Wilder Girls’ successor is finally here—and it’s eerier and more atmospheric than any reader could hope for!”
—Laura Graveline, Brazos Bookstore, Houston, TX
Author Letter for Early Readers
of WHAT WE HARVEST
