Bo Caldwell is a renowned literary fiction novelist, born in Oklahoma City. She grew up in Los Angeles and pursued her education at Stanford University. After completing her education, she received several prestigious fellowships, including a Wallace Stegner Fellowship and a Jones Lectureship in Creative Writing at Stanford University. She also received a fellowship in literature from the National Endowment for the Arts, an Artist Fellowship from the Arts Council of Santa Clara County, the Georgia Shreve Prize in Fiction at Stanford University, and the Joseph Henry Jackson Award from the San Francisco Foundation.
Caldwell's literary career began with her short fiction being published in various literary journals, including Ploughshares, Story, Epoch, and others. She gained national recognition with the publication of her first novel, "The Distant Land of My Father," in 2001. The book was a national bestseller, one of the Los Angeles Times’ Best Books of 2001, and a Booksense 76 pick in both hardcover and paperback. The book was also selected for community reading programs in Pasadena, Santa Clara County, and the City of Claremont. Foreign rights to the book were sold to the U.K., the Netherlands, France, and Italy.
In addition to her writing, Caldwell is also an active member of the literary community in Northern California, where she currently resides with her husband, Ron Hansen, and their two children. She has been involved in various community reading programs and has had her personal essays published in O, The Oprah Magazine, the Washington Post Magazine, and America Magazine. Her short stories have also been included in literary journals such as Story, Ploughshares, and Epoch. Her second novel, "City of Tranquil Light," was published in 2010 and was a Los Angeles Times bestseller, an October 2010 Indie Next Notable, and one of O Magazine’s Ten Must Reads for October 2010. Foreign rights to the book have been sold in Italy and Turkey.