Agent
Assistant
Biography
Margot Douaihy, PhD, is the author of Bandit/Queen: The Runaway Story of Belle Starr, Scranton Lace, and Girls Like You (Clemson University Press). Her writing has been featured in Colorado Review, Diode, Florida Review, North American Review, PBS NewsHour, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Portland Review, Wisconsin Review, ONE ART, and elsewhere. She serves as a Section Editor of Journal of Creative Writing Studies (RIT ScholarWorks). Currently, Dr. Douaihy teaches Creative Writing at Franklin Pierce University in Rindge, NH, where she also serves as the Editor of the Northern New England Review literary journal. Her honors include: Aesthetica Magazine Creative Writing Award Finalist (2021), Ernest Hemingway Foundation Hemingway Shorts Finalist (2021), Madville Publishing Blue Moon Prize for the Novel Finalist (2021), Sunspot Lit Geminga Fiction Contest Finalist (2021), Novel Slices Prize Finalist (2021), Palette Poetry Sappho Prize Finalist (2020), UNO Publishing Lab Novel Prize Semifinalist (2020), Red Hen Press Quill Prose Award Finalist (2019), C&R Press Best Novel Award Longlist (2018), Lambda Literary Award Poetry Finalist (2015), and the First Book Foundation of Greater New Orleans Grant Winner (2009). A founding member of the Creative Writing Studies Organization, Margot Douaihy is an active member of the Radius of Arab American Writers.
DIVINE RUIN (Zando / Pushkin, 2026)
‘Divine Ruin is fearlessly inspired’ Gillian Flynn
It’s a steamy, restless end of the school year in New Orleans. Sister Holiday is busy teaching music classes and preparing for her permanent vow ceremony, a pivotal moment in her journey of faith. But when one of her favourite students is found dead of a fentanyl overdose, Sister Holiday and her partner-in-PI, Magnolia Riveaux, are launched on a mission to track down the drug dealers.
As students continue to fall prey to this sinister drug under her watch, Sister Holiday becomes more and more desperate to stop the epidemic. All the while, she must contend with her own past with addiction, a demon that is never too far.
As she goes deep undercover with a local gang, Sister Holiday’s darkest and most shocking case yet will test the limits of her faith-and her sanity.
Publications
Poetry
Mirroring the narrative possibilities of fabric that is both luxury and utility, SCRANTON LACE occupies the space between the real and imagined. Forty-four poems and twenty illustrations interact to explore themes ranging from inter-arts expression to the time/timelessness of derelict spaces to queerness and love. The illustrations by Bri Hermanson incorporate relief prints made from actual lace manufactured in the now-abandoned Scranton Lace factory.
Girls Like You investigates identity and lesbian phenomenology through prismatic forms such as the persona poem, prose poem, triolet, sonnet, and villanelle. The trailer for Girls Like You, created by scratchboard illustrator Bri Hermanson, offers a queer re-imagining of Plato’s ‘Allegory of the Cave’.
Margot Douaihy plays with the limits of language in this ‘impressively broad’ (Philadelphia Stories) chapbook. Reflecting on youthful naiveté as well as American pop culture tropes, i would ruby if i could inhabits the space where alienation and the desire for connection coexist.
Fiction
Sister Holiday, a chain-smoking, heavily tattooed, queer nun, puts her amateur sleuthing skills to the test in this “unique and confident” debut crime novel (Gillian Flynn).
When Saint Sebastian’s School becomes the target of a shocking arson spree, the Sisters of the Sublime Blood and their surrounding community are thrust into chaos. Unsatisfied with the officials’ response, sardonic and headstrong Sister Holiday becomes determined to unveil the mysterious attacker herself and return her home and sanctuary to its former peace. Her investigation leads down a twisty path of suspicion and secrets in the sticky, oppressive New Orleans heat, turning her against colleagues, students, and even fellow Sisters along the way.
Sister Holiday is more faithful than most, but she’s no saint. To piece together the clues of this high-stakes mystery, she must first reckon with the sins of her checkered past-and neither task will be easy.
An exciting start to Margot Douaihy’s bold series for Gillian Flynn Books that breathes new life into the hard-boiled genre, Scorched Grace is a fast-paced and punchy whodunnit that will keep readers guessing until the very end.
Tattooed from her neck to her toes and sporting a gold tooth as sharp as her wisecracks, Sister Holiday struggles to stay on the righteous path. She’s committed both to taking her permanent vows with the Sisters of the Sublime Blood and joining Magnolia Riveaux’s latest venture, Redemption Detective Agency-both in service of satisfying her eternal quest for answers.
When Sister Holiday and Riveaux set out to bust a philandering husband, they instead find the body of a priest floating in the Mississippi river, and with it, Redemption’s next case.
As a torrential rainstorm drowns New Orleans for three harrowing days over Easter weekend, Sister Holiday and Riveaux follow the clues. With the stakes rising alongside the relentless floodwaters, our favourite punk nun-sleuth throws herself into the deep end yet again.
