Maggie Shipstead

Ballet is a notoriously brutal profession. From early childhood through their teens, dancers must train and practice relentlessly, until they make it to a professional dance company with the hope of eventually attaining principal dancer status. An injury can derail...

From the start, the writing voice is compelling, both being extremely assured and able to pack in huge amounts of information in a few words. Early on, we hear from one of the two protagonists that, My parents had left...