Kristen Arnett is an American author known for her sharp humor and insightful storytelling. She primarily writes fiction, including her acclaimed novels Mostly Dead Things and With Teeth, exploring themes of family, queer identity, and complex relationships.
If you enjoy reading books by Kristen Arnett then you might also like the following authors:
Carmen Maria Machado writes creatively and boldly about complicated relationships, bodies, and identity. Her stories blend genres like horror, fantasy, and magical realism, highlighting emotional truths with vivid imagination.
In her collection Her Body and Other Parties, Machado explores themes of sexuality, femininity, and power dynamics in completely surprising and often unsettling ways.
Ottessa Moshfegh is known for dark humor, flawed characters, and sharp insight into human loneliness. Her novels often dive deep into the sadness, alienation, and absurdity of everyday life.
In My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Moshfegh captures a young woman's desire to escape her emotional emptiness through self-induced hibernation, highlighting the strangeness and melancholy hiding beneath regular life.
T Kira Madden writes honestly about family, identity, and coming of age in complex, often broken circumstances. She brings sensitivity and clarity to complicated childhood memories and family dynamics.
In her memoir, Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls, Madden navigates love, loss, trauma, and identity hoping to find understanding and belonging.
Lauren Groff writes lyrically about complicated people, families, and marriages, often highlighting tensions beneath glossy exteriors. Her prose is intense and poetic, layered with emotional truths.
Her novel Fates and Furies examines a marriage through two sides—husband and wife—uncovering secrets and unexpected darkness within what seems like a perfect relationship.
Karen Russell's stories move between the ordinary and the wildly imaginative. She creates haunting, often funny worlds that feel surreal yet familiar, exploring themes like family, adolescence, and identity through strange, eccentric scenarios.
Her novel Swamplandia! tells the strange and magical coming-of-age story of Ava, who's trying to save her family's failing alligator-wrestling theme park in the Florida Everglades.
Brandon Taylor writes thoughtful, emotionally powerful novels that closely examine relationships, loneliness, and the complexity of identity. His style pays attention to everyday moments and emotions, capturing subtle tensions with precision and warmth.
If you love Kristen Arnett's honest, insightful explorations of family dynamics, you might like Taylor's novel Real Life, which follows a young Black graduate student navigating the pressures of academia and personal relationships in the Midwest.
Melissa Broder is known for her darkly humorous—but deeply empathetic—writing, which explores desire, loneliness, and how strange human connections can become.
Her sharp wit and quirky, sometimes surreal storytelling will appeal if you enjoy Arnett's dry humor and offbeat characters.
Try Broder's novel The Pisces, about a woman struggling with loss, finding herself unexpectedly involved in an intense romantic relationship with a merman.
Sarah Gailey often uses the unusual and speculative to shed fresh, insightful perspectives on identity, queer experience, and relationships.
Like Kristen Arnett, Gailey combines humor and authentic emotional resonance, creating narratives that feel both inventive and deeply human.
Check out their novel Upright Women Wanted, a queer Western adventure following a young woman fleeing strict societal rules and joining a group of outlaw librarians.
Jeanette Winterson crafts lyrical, imaginative, and emotionally honest fiction that frequently explores sexuality, identity, and human relationships with tenderness and clarity. Her work features inventive storytelling and warmth that connects deeply to characters' inner lives.
Readers drawn to Arnett’s nuanced portrayals of sexuality and family might appreciate Winterson’s beloved novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, a captivating semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story about growing up queer in a religious household.
Dorothy Allison tells hard-hitting, deeply honest stories that center around working-class characters and LGBTQ perspectives. Her fiction is gritty, compassionate, and unflinching, highlighting authentic experiences of hardship, community, family dysfunction, and resilience.
If you connected with Kristen Arnett's detailed insights into family complexities and darker human interactions, you might appreciate Allison’s powerful novel Bastard Out of Carolina, a visceral portrait of a girl raised in poverty, navigating family trauma and personal identity.
Torrey Peters writes with humor and honesty about complex queer identities, relationships, and family dynamics. Her novel Detransition, Baby combines sharp wit and emotional depth as it explores motherhood, gender, and unconventional family structures.
Samantha Irby brings a hilarious and uncompromising voice to her essays. In , she openly tackles themes like anxiety, relationships, chronic illness, and the absurdity of everyday life, all with refreshing bluntness and charm.
Bryan Washington writes honestly and thoughtfully about the complex bonds formed through community and romantic relationships.
His novel Memorial explores companionship, family ties, love, and identity with sincerity and careful attention to the small moments that shape our connections.
Halle Butler uses dark humor and sharp insight to examine the alienation and banality of contemporary work environments. Her novel captures everyday frustrations and existential dread through a painfully funny and relatable perspective.
Alexander Chee blends beautifully crafted storytelling with deeply emotional explorations of identity, sexuality, and history.
In his novel The Queen of the Night, he mixes historical drama and psychological depth while following a famous opera singer caught up in mystery and personal intrigue.