Michael Without Apology

Catherine Ryan Hyde is an American author. She has published roughly 50 novels, many of which have been New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Amazon Charts bestsellers. She began her literary career writing short stories. Such titles have appeared in an array of literary magazines including Glimmer Train, Ploughshares, the Antioch Review, the Virginia Quarterly Review, and the Michigan Quarterly Review. Some of her stories “have been nominated for The Best American Short Stories,” the Pushcart Prize, and the O. Henry Award (282).

Hyde’s first published novel was Funeral for Horses in 1997, followed by Earthquake Weather (1998), a short story anthology. She is best known for her subsequent novel Pay It Forward, which established her reputation in the literary world. Originally published by Pocket Books in 1999, Pay It Forward features a car accident that was inspired by true events from Hyde’s life. The novel was adapted into a film by Warner Brothers in 2000. Hyde later republished a youth edition of the same story in 2014 under the same title. According to Hyde’s author biography in the source text, this version of the book was “chosen by the American Library Association (ALA) for its Best Books for Young Adults list” and has been “translated into more than twenty-three languages for distribution in over thirty countries” (281).