The world of literary gossip is usually pretty quiet. It's mostly quiet rooms, clacking keyboards, and maybe a polite disagreement over a semi-colon at a book launch. But then you have the story of Andrew Ewell and Anna Shearer. This isn't just a story about two people falling in love; it’s a sprawling, messy, and deeply public collapse of two marriages that ended up fueling several different books.
Honestly, if you saw this plot in a movie, you'd think it was a bit too much.
The basics are this: Andrew Ewell was married to the novelist Hannah Pittard. Anna Shearer was married to the writer Ryan Fox. They were all friends. Then, the "intertwining" began. It wasn't just a quiet affair that ended in a clean break. It was a catalyst for a series of memoirs and novels that have turned their private lives into a public case study on betrayal and the ethics of writing about the people you love—or used to love.
How the Andrew Ewell and Anna Shearer Connection Started
It’s hard to talk about Andrew and Anna without mentioning the "Four Friends" dynamic. Back in the early 2010s, these two couples were close. They vacationed together. They talked about their writing. They shared their lives.
In July 2016, the house of cards fell over. Hannah Pittard discovered that Andrew Ewell was having an affair with Anna Shearer.
The fallout was immediate and nuclear. Both marriages ended. But instead of fading into the background, the participants did what writers do: they wrote. Pittard wrote We Are Flying, a memoir that didn't pull any punches about the betrayal. Andrew Ewell eventually wrote his own debut novel, Set for Life, which people naturally combed through looking for his side of the story.
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It’s a bizarre situation. You have multiple perspectives of the same heartbreak sitting on the same shelf at Barnes & Noble.
The Ethics of Writing Your Ex
One of the reasons people are still searching for Andrew Ewell and Anna Shearer years later is the ethical debate it sparked.
When your life falls apart because of someone else’s choices, do you have the right to sell that story? Pittard clearly felt she did. She even admitted to "mining" her marriage while it was failing—purposefully getting into arguments with Ewell so she could excuse herself to the bathroom and type the dialogue into her phone.
That's cold. But is it unfair?
Ewell, for his part, has been relatively defensive. In interviews, like the one in Vulture, he’s mentioned that he didn't really "see himself" in the books written about him. He didn't see Anna in them either. It’s a classic case of "your truth versus my truth."
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Today, Andrew Ewell and Anna Shearer are married. They stayed together through the scandal, the public scrutiny, and the literary evisceration. That alone is a rarity in these types of high-profile "affair" stories. Usually, the pressure of everyone watching—and the guilt of how it started—crumbles the new relationship. They seem to have defied that.
Why This Story Still Resonates in 2026
People love a tragedy, but they love a transformation even more.
- The voyeurism factor: We get to see the "behind the scenes" of a literary marriage.
- The creative cost: It asks the question: what is off-limits for art?
- The outcome: The fact that Andrew and Anna are still together adds a layer of complexity. If they had broken up two months later, it would be a simple story of a mistake. Because they stayed together, it’s a story about a massive, life-altering choice.
There is a certain irony in the fact that Andrew Ewell, a man who values his privacy and has criticized how he was portrayed, is now a published author himself. Set for Life isn't a direct memoir, but when you are part of a public scandal involving other writers, readers are always going to look for the "hidden" meaning.
What Most People Get Wrong
Most people think this was just a "cheating scandal." It was actually a total restructuring of a social circle.
Ryan Fox (Anna's first husband) and Hannah Pittard were essentially the casualties, but they also became the narrators. The public narrative for a long time was shaped entirely by the people who felt wronged. It took years for Andrew Ewell to put his own work out there, and even then, he avoided the "tell-all" format.
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Anna Shearer has remained the most private figure in this quartet. While the others have written books or given extensive interviews, she has largely stayed out of the spotlight, despite being the catalyst for so much of the prose produced in the last decade.
Real-World Takeaways
If you're following this because you're interested in the writing world, or just because you like a good drama, there are a few things to keep in mind.
First, memory is a tricky thing. If you read Pittard’s accounts and then listen to Ewell’s interviews, you’re looking at two different universes.
Second, the "writer's life" isn't always as glamorous as it looks on Instagram. Behind those fellowships at Yaddo and the creative writing degrees are real people making messy, sometimes hurtful decisions.
Lastly, the shelf life of a scandal is much longer when it's printed in hardback. As long as these books are in circulation, people will continue to search for the names Andrew Ewell and Anna Shearer to see what actually happened.
Next Steps for the Curious
If you want to understand the full scope of this literary entanglement, the best way is to look at the primary sources.
- Read "We Are Flying" by Hannah Pittard: This is the most direct account of the breakup and the discovery of the affair.
- Check out "Set for Life" by Andrew Ewell: See how he handles narrative and character, and decide for yourself if his fictional world mirrors his real one.
- Look up the Vulture feature "Four Friends, Two Marriages, One Affair": This is arguably the best piece of journalism on the topic, featuring interviews with the parties involved.
The story of Andrew Ewell and Anna Shearer serves as a reminder that in the world of professional storytellers, your life can very easily become someone else's best-selling plot point.