In a book club and starting to plan your reads for next year? Check out our 2025 picks.

Haven Kimmel Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

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

Haven Kimmel

Haven Kimmel

Haven Kimmel Biography

Haven Kimmel was born in New Castle, Indiana, and was raised in Mooreland, Indiana, the focus of her bestselling memoir, A Girl Named Zippy. She is the other of four other novels, a second memoir and two children’s books.

Kimmel earned her undergraduate degree in English and creative writing from Ball Sate University and attended North Carolina State University as well as the seminary at the Earlham School of Religion. She lives in Durham, North Carolina.

From the author's website



This bio was last updated on 02/25/2016. 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 $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Interview

Haven Kimmel discusses life, poetry, Jane Austen - and her family and friends as portrayed in A Girl Named Zippy.

[A hand reaches out and depresses a knob on a little blue tape recorder. Someone says "glamorous park bench." Tapping sound. Throat clearing.]

Hello, and welcome to Interview. Let's just go straight to our guest, author Haven Kimmel, and have her answer a few questions about her book, A Girl Named Zippy.

You had some unusual experiences in the beginning of your life--a near fatal staph infection, baldness until almost three, and, most memorably, your first words at three years old: "I'll make a deal with you." How did this unusual start affect your life?


I'm of the opinion (I share this with some contemporary literary theorists, I think) that the word "text" is both broad and deep metaphorically, and thus we can, without much shame or sense of personal responsibility, litter our conversation with it. So let's say an individual life is a text; in A Girl Named Zippy I simply read my life backwards. The person I am now is essentially that weird little mute bald girl, only taller. And with hair, obviously. James Hillman, in his book The Soul's Code, proposes the "...

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 $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Books by this Author

Books by Haven Kimmel at BookBrowse
Iodine jacket The Used World jacket She Got up off the Couch jacket A Girl Named Zippy 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 $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for Haven Kimmel 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

We recommend 11 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 $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket
    The House of Doors
    by Tan Twan Eng
    Every July, I take on the overly ambitious goal of reading all of the novels chosen as longlist ...
  • Book Jacket: The Puzzle Box
    The Puzzle Box
    by Danielle Trussoni
    During the tumultuous last days of the Tokugawa shogunate, a 17-year-old emperor known as Meiji ...
  • Book Jacket
    Something, Not Nothing
    by Sarah Leavitt
    In 2020, after a lifetime of struggling with increasingly ill health, Sarah Leavitt's partner, ...
  • Book Jacket
    A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens
    by Raul Palma
    Raul Palma's debut novel A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens introduces Hugo Contreras, who came to the ...

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Pony Confidential
    by Christina Lynch

    In this whimsical mystery, a grumpy pony must clear his beloved human's name from a murder accusation.

Who Said...

In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant

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

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

H I O the G

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.