About

Shelly Oria is the author of New York 1, Tel Aviv 0 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014), which earned nominations for a Lambda Literary Award and the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction, among other honors. In 2016, she coauthored a digital novella, CLEAN, commissioned by WeTransfer and McSweeney’s, which received two Lovie Awards from the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. 

In September of 2019, Indelible in the Hippocampus, an anthology of writings from the #metoo movement, compiled and edited by Oria, was published by McSweeney’s. The book is now in its third printing. I Know What’s Best For You, a multi-genre anthology Oria curated and edited for McSweeney’s in response to the reproductive freedom crisis, came out in May of 2022. Its supplement, I Know What’s Best For You All Over the World, featuring sixteen writers and artists from around the globe, is available online, as well as in ebook form with purchase of the book. I Know What’s Best For You was created in partnership with The Brigid Alliance.

Oria's fiction, which has appeared in The Paris Review and read on Selected Shorts at Symphony Space, has been translated to several languages. Oria is a recipient of various honors including the LMCC Workspace Grant and three MacDowell Fellowships, among other recognitions. For several years, Oria curated and hosted the series Sweet! Actors Reading Writers in the East Village, along with theatre director Annie Levy. Oria lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she codirected the Writer’s Forum at the Pratt Institute for seven years, and where she has a private practice as a creativity coach.