Long-listed for the Northern California Independent Booksellers' 2019 award for fiction.

"PAPER IS WHITE is a wonderfully tender, inventive exploration of survival, secrets, memory, and love. Zaid's characters are wholly original and riveting, and this story is funny, moving and necessary; you will love this book."
Karen E. Bender, author of Refund, Finalist for the National Book Award 

PAPER IS WHITE

When Holocaust oral historian Ellen Margolis and her girlfriend decide to get married, Ellen's search for a blessing leads her into a complicated relationship with a wily survivor of the Kaunas Ghetto, a woman in search of a blessing of her own.

Set in ebullient, 1990s Dot-com era San Francisco, PAPER IS WHITE is a novel about the gravitational pull of the past and the words we must find to make ourselves whole.

    Sign up for news!

Paper is White is a funny, bright novel about the stories we think we need and the stories that turn out to matter more than we could have imagined.
I loved being in Hilary Zaid’s world.
–Ramona Ausubel, author of No One is Here Except All of Us and Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty   

Praise for PAPER IS WHITE

"Zaid subverts our literary preconceptions of these two seemingly disparate narratives, the legacy of the Holocaust and queer relationships, ultimately threading them instead into a slow-burning treatise on the power of love ."--San Francisco Chronicle

Winner, Bloom Chapbook Prize for Short Fiction, 2016​

The Dark Between the Stars

Pushcart Prize-Nominated

"For Non-Speakers of the Mother Tongue"
"Paper Is White is a beautifully written and emotionally resonant novel, by a writer from whom we can expect to hear much more in the years ahead.  Hilary Zaid is a name you'll want to remember.  Her book is one you'll have a hard time putting down."
Steve Yarbrough, author of eleven books, including The Unmade World (2018)

Where to Buy PAPER IS WHITE

PAPER IS WHITE is available wherever books are sold. Your local, independent bookseller will be happy to order you a copy, and so will your local library! But please don't download electronic copies of the book from a source you don't know and trust. Piracy hurts writers and publishers and that illegal download might be a virus!
​To support your writer and protect yourself, only download from a trusted source!

PAPER

THE NOVEL

Short Fiction

Events

About Hilary

contact