Open Line
Author Biography

Publishers Weekly (starred review):
“Hawley’s characters are fully realized people, with their own set of ambitions, insecurities and competing desires, and her great achievement is to have constructed out of their lives a deft and hilarious sendup of the media and political culture.”

Booklist:
“Hawley . . . shrewdly skewers the media and popular culture.”

Library Journal:
“A well-written, fast-paced story with believable characters . . . Talk-show listeners will recognize the forces at play here, and this novel will appeal both to them and to fans of political novels like Larry Beinhart’s The Librarian and American Hero, the basis for the movie Wag the Dog. Strongly recommended.”

Stewart O’Nan:
“Even the most outraged and cynical will find much to (ruefully) laugh at in Ellen Hawley’s depiction of the American media’s post-ethical age and the bizarre world of contemporary talk radio.”

Heather McElhatton:
“Open Line is an eerie urban fable, a cautionary tale told in Hawley’s swift and commanding voice.”