Nathan Hill

Nathan Hill is an American novelist and former journalist. He is best known for his novels The Nix (2016) and Wellness (2023). He won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize's Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction for The Nix. Wellness was also later selected for Oprah's Book Club.

Nathan Hill was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in 1975. His grandparents were farmers, and his father held various management roles at Kmart. He spent his childhood in several Midwestern states, including Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma and Kansas.

Hill attended the University of Iowa, initially intending to study biomedical engineering. However, he switched to English and journalism after taking creative writing classes. He wrote for The Daily Iowan and graduated in 1999.

After graduating, Nathan worked as a reporter for The Gazette in Cedar Rapids. He has said that the discipline of news writing helped him later in his career as a fiction writer. Two years later, he left to pursue an MFA at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

He then moved to New York City to focus on his literary work. After receiving repeated rejections for his short stories, he took a break from writing. He has spoken about spending that period playing video games.

Nathan Hill spent ten years writing his first novel, The Nix (2016). It follows Samuel Andresen-Anderson, a community college English professor whose mother abandoned him, only to later reappear as a political activist. The story spans several decades, exploring themes such as family history, war, digital culture, and identity. It uses multiple perspectives and a non-linear timeline. The book was well-received, and it sold in several international markets.

Following the success of the book, he left his academic post at the University of South Florida and travelled widely to speak about it.

His second novel, Wellness (2023), has been described by reviewers as a satire of modern life. It chronicles the decades-long relationship between Elizabeth and Jack, exploring themes of marriage, health culture, technology, and intimacy. In 2023, Oprah Winfrey selected the novel for her Oprah's Book Club.

Nathan Hill continues to write articles for news outlets. He lives in Naples, Florida, with his wife, the musician Jenni Hill.