About M

M Hendrix (she/her) is the author of The Chaperone, published by Sourcebooks Fire on June 6, 2023.

M* earned her bachelor’s degree in journalism at Indiana University before studying literature and creative writing in graduate school, receiving her master’s degree from Miami University and her doctorate from the University of Cincinnati, where she was a Taft Fellow. She has been a finalist for the Aesthetica creative writing award and the SCBWI Crystal Kite award as well as being nominated five times for the Pushcart Prize. She is represented by John Cusick of Folio Literary. 

Her work has appeared in Newsweek, Aesthetica, The Independent, USA Today, The Vestal Review, Psychology Today, The Satirist, Nzuri, The Haven, Letters to Dead Authors, Medium, 2nd & Church, Word Salad, Quirk, Cairn, Gravity Hill, the Louisville Courier-Journal, the Bowling Green Daily News, and more. She is also the author of two previous books. For a complete list of publications, click here.

M is a big fan of reading, of course, but also of seeing movies in theaters and hearing the gasps, laughs, and cries of those around her. She also loves being outdoors all year except during those terrible summer months when rolling down the window of her vintage Chevy doesn’t offer any relief from the heat. She has two mottos in life: one stolen from Newton—“A body at rest stays at rest; a body in motion stays in motion”—and the other—“Empathy above all”—of her own invention. M is, in fact, short for EMpathy as it is is her guiding principle.

M started her life in St. Vincent’s Infant Center, an orphanage in Maryland, and lived there for seven weeks until two incredibly loving people showed up to adopt her. Looking back, she realizes that was the first time in her life she won the lottery (the second being the day she met her amazing spouse, the third being the day her tenacious agent called to offer her representation). Still, being adopted is not without its challenges, and she devoted a decent portion of her adult life to searching for her true identity. At the age of 29, she learned her biological mother was an Irish American who lived in Maryland, and at the age of 50, she discovered her biological father was the son of Holocaust survivors, a Sephardic Jew who lived in Israel.

Born in Baltimore and raised in New Jersey and Indiana, M has resided in twelve states and now makes her home in Bowling Green, Kentucky, where she’s lived for sixteen years (longer than she’s lived anywhere in her life) with her husband, New York Times bestselling author David Bell. 

The Chaperone is her first novel.