Get our Best Book Club Books of 2025 eBook!

Kathy Hepinstall Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Author Biography  | Interview  | Books by this Author  | Read-Alikes

Kathy Hepinstall

Kathy Hepinstall

How to pronounce Kathy Hepinstall: HEP-in-stall (rhymes with pep)

Kathy Hepinstall Biography

Kathy Hepinstall was born in Odessa, Texas and was raised mostly in Spring, Texas, two hours from the Louisiana border, where most of her relatives still reside. She lives in Austin, Texas. Her first novel, The House of Gentle Men was published in 2000 and her second, The Absence of Nectar, was published in 2001. The House of Gentle Men was a finalist in the Penn Faulkner awards West and was featured on the LA Times Bestseller list. Her third novel, Prince of Lost Places, was published in 2003.

Hepinstall has also worked in advertising, both freelancing and working for several agencies in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Kathy Hepinstall's website

This bio was last updated on 10/23/2016. In a perfect world, we would like to keep all of BookBrowse's biographies up to date, but with many thousands of lives to keep track of it's simply impossible to do. So, if the date of this bio is not recent, you may wish to do an internet search for a more current source, such as the author's website or social media presence. If you are the author or publisher and would like us to update this biography, send the complete text and we will replace the old with the new.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Interview

Kathy Hepinstall writes about her childhood, which provided the inspiration for The House of Gentlemen, and her love of Louisiana and the south.

Life is That Big

I lived in Texas and Oklahoma until I was about six years old. Then my father moved us to New Jersey. My Texas accent never recovered from the two years I spent there. The rest of my childhood I lived in Spring Texas, a couple hours from the Louisiana border.

After I received my bachelor's degree from The University of Texas in Austin, Texas, I moved to Houston to try to join the creative writing master's program at The University of Houston. Being declared "marginal," I never got into the program. Instead, I took the literature route and received my master's degree two and a half years later.

I then moved to Los Angeles and entered the world of advertising - doing work for Coca-Cola, Nike, Ortho Weed Killer, and just about any other product you can name. Then three or four years ago, I moved to Austin, Texas and began writing seriously. Much of the time I drew heavily on my relatives from Louisiana.

Every year the relatives get together in Louisiana and clean out the family graveyard. Last year we had our first official graveyard softball game because we liked the sound of it. Currently I'm working on a book set in a graveyard because the subject fascinates me. Our family cemetery is very ...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Books by this Author

Books by Kathy Hepinstall at BookBrowse
The Book of Polly jacket Blue Asylum jacket The House of Gentle Men jacket
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for Kathy Hepinstall but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose read-alikes

  • Chris Adrian

    Chris Adrian

    Chris Adrian was born in Washington, D.C. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he received his MD from East Virginia Medical School. "Every Night for a Thousand Years", the New Yorker story from which this ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    Blue Asylum

    Try:
    Gob's Grief
    by Chris Adrian

  • Serena Burdick

    Serena Burdick

    Serena Burdick is the author of the novels Girl In The Afternoon and The Girls With No Names. She is the 2017 International Book Award Winner for Historical Fiction. She studied creative writing at Sarah Lawrence, holds a ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    Blue Asylum

    Try:
    The Girls with No Names
    by Serena Burdick

We recommend 17 similar authors


Non-members can see 2 results. Become a member
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

BookBrowse Book Club

  • Book Jacket
    The Mysterious Bakery on Rue de Paris
    by Evie Woods
    From the million-copy bestselling author of The Lost Bookshop.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    The Fairbanks Four
    by Brian Patrick O’Donoghue

    One murder, four guilty convictions, and a community determined to find justice.

  • Book Jacket

    Happy Land
    by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

    From the New York Times bestselling author, a novel about a family's secret ties to a vanished American Kingdom.

  • Book Jacket

    The Seven O'Clock Club
    by Amelia Ireland

    Four strangers join an experimental treatment to heal broken hearts in Amelia Ireland's heartfelt debut novel.

  • Book Jacket

    One Death at a Time
    by Abbi Waxman

    A cranky ex-actress and her Gen Z sobriety sponsor team up to solve a murder that could send her back to prison in this dazzling mystery.

Who Said...

The library is the temple of learning, and learning has liberated more people than all the wars in history

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

A C on H S

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.