Cassandra King
In April 2004, Cassandra King's first novel, Making Waves in Zion was reissued by Hyperion of New York under the title Making Waves. Hyperion released her second novel, The Sunday Wife, in 2002, and a third, The Same Sweet Girls, in 2005. In addition, King published an essay in Callaloo, a journal of African-American studies and short stories in various quarterlies. Her work also appears in the collection Alabama Bound: The Stories of a State and Belles’ Letters, an anthology released by Milkweed Press of Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 2002 and in the second volume of Stories from the Blue Moon Café, released in 2004.
The Sunday Wife was a Booksense choice; a Literary Guild and Book-of-the-Month Club selection; a People Magazine Page-Turner of the Week; Books-a-Million President’s Pick for 2002; Utah’s Salt Lake Libraries Readers’ Choice Award nominee; and one of South Carolina’s Readers’ Circle selections. Now in trade paperback, The Sunday Wife was the Nestle Corporation’s choice in a campaign to promote reading groups. In addition, The Sunday Wife was chosen as one of Book Sense’s top reading group selections for 2006. King’s third novel, The Same Sweet Girls, was the national number one Book Sense Selection for February; a Book-of-the-Month Club and Literary Guild selection; and spent several weeks on the New York Times extended list as well as SEBA’s bestsellers list. Both The Sunday Wife and The Same Sweet Girls were nominated for SEBA’s book of the year. A fourth novel, Queen of Broken Hearts, the story of a divorce therapist who can heal everyone’s broken heart but her own, was released March 2007, and became a Literary Guild and Book-of-the-Month Club Selection.
King was born and raised in Pinckard, Alabama, a small community outside of Dothan, on a peanut farm which is still in the King family. Her grandfather, Jim King, was recognized as the first commercial peanut farmer in the state. She received a B.A. and M.A. from the University of Montevallo, where she later taught English, as she did at Jefferson State and Gadsden State colleges. King presently lives in the Low Country of South Carolina with her husband, novelist Pat Conroy.
