For more than a decade, Anica Mrose Rissi carried fragments of a story with her on walks through Princeton neighborhoods, parks and plazas.
On April 7, those fragments will take final form as “Girl Reflected in Knife,” a young adult novel that will be published by Penguin Random House. The author says the book is one of the most ambitious works of her career — and one shaped in part by her years living and writing in and around Princeton.
Rissi will be at Princeton Public Library on April 7 for a launch party for “Girl Reflected in Knife.” She will be in conversation with author Emily X.R. Pan and members of the PPL’s teen advisory board. The party will start at 6:30 p.m.
Now that the book is complete, she reflects that in some ways, “Girl Reflected in Knife” is exactly the book she set out to write. And yet, she endured a 12-year process from start to finish.
“The book was a slow accumulation of questions, ideas, experiences and ambitions that could not have been rushed,” she says. “I needed that time to try, fail and experiment. The story needed that time to become fully itself, and to help me become the writer who could pull it off.”
The novel follows Destiny, a 17-year-old girl navigating heartbreak, instability and a spiraling mental health crisis. Rissi describes it this way:
“‘Girl Reflected in Knife’ is an exploration of love, heartbreak, addiction, mental health issues, friendship and survival. It’s a modern fractured fairy tale about the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive—and what happens when those stories and our lived realities no longer align. I’ve touched on some of these topics in my previous books, but I was excited to really go deep on them here.”
Rissi, 47, now lives in nearby Skillman, but her creative life remains closely tied to Princeton, where she once lived on Moran Avenue, within walking distance of Princeton Public Library, Labyrinth Books, Witherspoon Woods and Mountain Lakes.
“I always walk with a notebook and pen in my pocket,” Rissi says. “Because there’s something about being in motion that helps shake ideas loose.”
It was in those places — particularly on long walks with her dog Sweet Potato and in the library’s quiet rooms — that “Girl Reflected in Knife” took shape.
Rissi moved to Princeton in 2015 after more than a decade in New York City, where she had built a career as a fiction editor. She married her husband — composer and Princeton University faculty member Jeff Snyder — and began establishing herself as a full-time writer.
All those shifts, she says, got her thinking about the story she told herself about who she was — a process that became intertwined with her writing. “I was revising my own story as I wrote the first draft of Destiny’s,” she says.
Rissi had begun jotting down ideas for “Girl Reflected in Knife” in 2012. But she did not start drafting it until about a year after her move to Princeton.
Over time, the manuscript went through multiple drafts and structural transformations. Rissi experimented with voice, pacing and narrative structure, gradually building the layered, unconventional form that defines the final book.
She says the novel’s structure reflects its subject matter: as Destiny’s mental state becomes increasingly unstable, the narrative itself begins to shift, blending her reality with delusion and imagination.
Rissi says those choices were designed to create an immersive — and sometimes unsettling — reading experience.
There came a point when she cut around 12,000 words out of the manuscript, stripping expository and ruminative passages down to their essence.
“This holds the reader at more of a distance, while also pulling them in closer: inviting them to pick up the breadcrumbs the narrator drops and discover the path on their own,” she says. “An invitation that, I hope, makes the reader feel trusted.”
The writing process was not always smooth. Rissi says there were moments when she considered abandoning the project, but ultimately felt compelled to continue.
“This book would not let me go,” she says.
* * *
Before becoming a full-time writer, Rissi spent more than a decade working in publishing. Her entry into the industry, she says, was largely accidental.
After graduating from college, she moved to New York City and worked in a cheese shop while searching for a career path. A chance connection led to an interview at Scholastic, where she was hired as an editorial assistant.
“I had no idea what anyone in the publishing industry did,” she says.
At Scholastic, she worked under editor David Levithan and gained experience across a wide range of children’s and young adult books. She later held editorial positions at Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins, eventually becoming an executive editor. In those roles, she collaborated closely with authors, helping them develop and refine their work.
“It was such a gift to be let in on those writers’ creative processes,” she says.
That experience shaped her understanding of writing as a process of exploration and revision.
Although she left her editorial career before the publication of her first book, the lessons she learned continue to influence her approach.
“No writer sits down and writes a perfect first draft,” she says. “Revision is a huge and crucial part of the writing process.”
She did not grow up dreaming of being an author. “When I was a teenager, my passion was politics. I wanted to go to law school and become a senator or perhaps a supreme court justice,” she says. “When I got older and learned more about what those jobs (and paths to them) are like, I realized law and politics weren’t the right careers for me.”
She didn’t consider writing a book of her own until she was in her 30s, and even then, she had no intention of seeing it published. “(I had) the idea that experiencing the ups and downs of drafting and revising would make me an even better editor,” she says.
That mission, she accomplished. But going through the process also opened new creative pathways. “The more I revised that first manuscript, the more my dreams for it grew,” she says.
Rissi’s first published book, “Anna, Banana, and the Friendship Split” (2015), launched a chapter book series for younger readers. She has since published multiple picture books, including “Watch Out for Wolf!” and “Love, Sophia on the Moon,” as well as middle-grade and young adult titles.
Her 2023 novel “Wishing Season” drew on her childhood in coastal Maine. She grew up on Deer Isle, an insular fishing community known for its storytelling traditions.
Though she was born in Maine and went to school in Deer Isle, she never felt fully accepted by her community.
“My parents and grandparents are ‘from away’ (born elsewhere), so I am not quite considered from there by many of the people I’ve known my entire life,” she says.
She describes “Wishing Season” as a book about siblings, friendship, grief, isolation, change and hope.
“It is also a love letter to the place where I grew up, its people and its landscape—to the saltwater-spruce-granite air, the pets and wild animals I loved, and the community of storytellers that shaped me,” she says. “And it’s about what it’s like to live in and love a place that’s an essential part of who you are, but where you don’t always fully belong—what it’s like to sometimes feel like an outsider in your own hometown.”
* * *
“Girl Reflected in Knife” is set in a more transient and unstable environment, reflecting the life of its protagonist, who has moved frequently with a parent struggling with addiction.
“Destiny has a very different upbringing from mine. Her mother, who struggles with addiction, has moved them from town to town, bad boyfriend to bad boyfriend, for most of Destiny’s life. At the start of the novel, when Destiny is seventeen, she is experiencing a fragile new stability—her mother is newly sober, they have a promising new living situation in a promising new town, and Destiny, for the first time ever, is falling in love.”
Destiny starts to believe she might be on the path to a “normal” life until her boyfriend casually breaks her heart.
“Her heartbreak and grief send her spiraling and set off the mental health crisis around which the novel is built,” Rissi says.
Even as “Girl Reflected in Knife” reaches readers, Rissi is already working on multiple new projects. Her day-to-day creative life remains rooted in the Princeton area.
Her husband, Jeff Snyder, is the director of electronic music at Princeton University. He teaches classes and also leads PLOrk, or the Princeton Laptop Orchestra.
He also designs and builds unusual electronic instruments and plays in various musical groups, including the band Owen Lake and the Tragic Loves. Owen Lake is Snyder’s electro-country alter ego.
Rissi grew up playing violin — her mother was a violin teacher — and she plays fiddle and writes lyrics for Owen Lake and the Tragic Loves. The group has an album slated to come out this summer.
She is developing another young adult novel that explores similar themes — including love, addiction and perception — through a different narrative lens.
She is also collaborating with illustrator Heather Fox on a new graphic chapter book series, “Inspector Quack,” which is expected to debut in 2028.
“The Inspector Quack series is like if Amelia Bedelia starred in ‘Knives Out’ as a duck who helps look for things. Plus, butt jokes,” she says.
The project has its own Princeton origins: Rissi met Fox through the Princeton Children’s Book Festival, and the collaboration grew out of that connection. Rissi hopes the Princeton Children’s Book Festival will return by then, so that she and Fox can sign books at the festival where they first met.
She co-authors a free quarterly newsletter, The Eavesdrop, focused on the writing process and publishing industry. “In each issue, we share the ins and outs of our creative processes, go deep on craft, and nerd out about publishing and other obsessions,” she says.
The Eavesdrop comes out four times a year. The most recent newsletter was released in March. “We’re talking about plot, from the ways we define, conceptualize, and approach it, to the strategies that save us when we’re stuck,” she says.
Readers can find previous issues and subscribe (for free) at thisistheeavesdrop.com.
Rissi is also helping to launch a new event series, Writers on Writing, at Labyrinth Books, with friend and author Amy Jo Burns. Writers on Writing will be aimed at bringing together authors and readers for in-depth conversations about craft.
The first event, scheduled for May 28, will focus on how writers begin their work. Authors Anna-Marie McLemore and Princeton’s own Dexter Palmer will be the guests.
“The writing life is full of ups and downs: creative highs and lows, book deals, book rejections — yes, even for those of us who have been published multiple times,” Rissi says.
But she loves the challenge of the writing itself. “It’s a puzzle, and the puzzle constantly changes shape. Each time I start a new project, I don’t really know how to write it yet. I have to accept I won’t know how to write it well until it’s done,” she says.
Online: anicarissi.com.
Skillman-based author Anica Mrose Rissi. (Photo by Kim Indresano.),
Author Anica Mrose Rissi with Sweet Potato
