For Carol LaHines, the most affecting stories are those that are leavened with a sardonic sensibility. Italo Calvino, one of her favorite writers, notes “th[e] particular connection between melancholy and humor,” speaking of how great writing “foregrounds [with] tiny, luminous traces that counterpoint the dark catastrophe.” She’s always veered toward the great literary comic writers—from Cervantes to Laurence Sterne to Pynchon, with a particular reverence for Nabokov, who believed that the best writing places the reader under a spell, enchanting the reader with the magic of words.
Carol LaHines’s debut novel, Someday Everything Will All Make Sense, was a finalist for the Nilsen Prize for a First Novel and an American Fiction Award. Her novel, The Vixen Amber Halloway, was published by Regal House in 2024. Her fiction has appeared in many noted literary journals including Fence, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Denver Quarterly, Cimarron Review, The Literary Review, The Laurel Review, North Dakota Quarterly, South Dakota Review, The South Carolina Review, The Chattahoochee Review, Sycamore Review, Permafrost, redivider, North Atlantic Review, Mount Hope Magazine, Literary Orphans, and Literal Latte. Her short story, “Papijack,” was selected by judge Patrick Ryan as the recipient of the Lamar York Prize for Fiction. Her short stories and novellas have also been finalists for the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction from Sarabande Books, the David Nathan Meyerson fiction prize, the New Letters short story award, and the Disquiet Literary Prize, among others. She is a graduate of New York University, Gallatin Division, and of St. John’s University School of Law. She has taught creative writing at the Bronx H.S. of Science and is a founding member of Telltale Authors, a writers’ collective.
Carol LaHines was a musician and practiced commercial law at a large firm before becoming a published writer. She lives with her family in New York City.
Regal House Publishing is delighted to bring you Carol’s novel, A Miracle-Gro of the Mind, in the fall of 2026.
