Holly Blackford is an associate professor of English and scholar of women's, children's, adolescent, and American literature at Rutgers University. She has published extensively on novels of youth and development by such authors as Louisa May Alcott, J. M. Barrie, Margaret Atwood, Lewis Carroll, Mark Twain, Henry James, and Harper Lee. Her first book, Out of this World: Why Literature Matters to Girls, is an ethnographic study of girls who find in literature a meaningful aesthetic experience.