National Book Awards Author Events

EXPLICIT. The Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao reads from and discusses his critically acclaimed new collection of stories, This is How You Lose Her. www.nationalbook.org

The beloved author of At the Bottom of the River reads from and discusses See Now Then, her first novel in 10 years. www.nationalbook.org

The acclaimed author of Lucky Girls reads from and discusses her most recent work, about a Bangladeshi Muslim woman whose online courtship leads to marriage in America. www.nationalbook.org

British author Martin Amis reads from and discusses his latest novel, Lionel Asbo. www.nationalbook.org

Ann Patchett is the author of six novels, including the New York Times Notable Book The Patron Saint of Liars, The Magician’s Assistant, the Pen Faulkner Award winner Bel Canto, Run, and, most recently, State of Wonder. She is also the author of the memoir Truth and Beauty, and has made numerous contributions to The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, The Atlantic, and others. A Guggenheim fellow, Patchett was the editor of The Best American Short Stories 2006. Patchett’s work has been translated into more than 30 languages. www.nationalbook.org

Bosnian-American writer Aleksandar Hemon is the author of The Lazarus Project, which was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award, and three collections of short stories: The Question of Bruno; Nowhere Man, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Love and Obstacles, a series of stories about coming of age in Communist Sarajevo. He is a Guggenheim fellow as well as the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant.” www.nationalbook.org

Teju Cole is a Nigerian American photographer and art historian, and the author of two critically acclaimed books: the novella Every Day is for the Thief, about a Lagos homecoming; and the novel Open City, about a Nigerian immigrant in Manhattan. He has contributed to numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Guardian. A professor and distinguished writer in residence at Bard College, Cole is currently at work on a narrative nonfiction work about Lagos. www.nationalbook.org

Born in the former Yugoslavia in 1985, Téa Obreht is the author of the “stunning” (The New York Times) National Book Award-nominated debut novel, The Tiger’s Wife. She has contributed stories to The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, The New York Times, and The Guardian, and has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories and Best American Non-Required Reading collections. Obreht was chosen as one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 under 35” and was named by The New Yorker as one of the 20 best fiction writers under 40. www.nationalbook.org

A prolific writer of fiction, Russell Banks is the author of The Sweet Hereafter and Affliction, both of which were adapted into feature films, as well as The Darling, Cloudsplitter, Rule of the Bone, Continental Drift, the recent Lost Memory of Skin, and others. His poetry, essays, and short fiction have appeared in publications such as The New York Times Book Review, Vanity Fair, Esquire, and Harper’s, as well as in the collection Angel on the Roof. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Ingram Merrill Award and the Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. www.nationalbook.org

In celebration of the centenary of the seminal American poet and National Book Award winner Elizabeth Bishop, the National Book Foundation presents a discussion of Bishop's life and legacy with poets Tina Chang and Vijay Seshadri, Joelle Biele, poet and editor, and Alice Quinn, former poetry editor of The New Yorker. Part of the 2011 Mad. Sq. Reads Series, Thursday, July 14, Madison Square Park at the Farragut Monument, New York City.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie grew up in Nigeria. Her work has been translated into 30 languages and has appeared in various publications, including The O. Henry Prize Stories 2003, The New Yorker, Granta, Financial Times, and Zoetrope. Her novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, won the Orange Broadband Prize, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, was named a New York Times Notable Book, and was a People and Black Issues Book Review Best Book of the Year. Her first novel, Purple Hibiscus, won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. Her latest book is a story collection called The Thing Around Your Neck. She is the recipient of a 2008 MacArthur Foundation fellowship, and was selected as one of The New Yorker’s “20 Under 40.” She divides her time between the United States and Nigeria.

Jennifer Egan, Thu, March 31 at 6:30pm from BAMCafe, Brooklyn Academy of Music. Moderated by Deborah Treisman. Jennifer Egan has published short stories in many magazines, including The New Yorker, Harper’s, Granta, and McSweeney's. Her first novel, The Invisible Circus, came out in 1995 and was released as a movie starring Cameron Diaz in 2001. Her second novel, Look at Me, was a National Book Award finalist in 2001, and her third, The Keep, was a national bestseller. Her latest book, A Visit From the Goon Squad, won critical acclaim as a brilliant, all-absorbing novel. Also a journalist, Egan has written many cover stories for on topics ranging from young fashion models to the secret online lives of closeted gay teens. Her 2002 cover story on homeless children received the Carroll Kowal Journalism Award, and her 2008 story on bipolar children won an Outstanding Media Award from the National Alliance on Mental Illness. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two sons.

Ann Beattie has been included in four O. Henry Award collections and in John Updike’s Best American Short Stories of the Century. In 2000, she received the PEN Malamud Award for achievement in the short story form. In 2005, she received the Rea Award for the Short Story. In a review of her most recent novella, , Jay McInerney described Beattie as “a national treasure,” The New York Times Book Review. She and her husband, Lincoln Perry, live in Key West, Florida and Charlottesville, Virginia, where she is Edgar Allan Poe Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Virginia.

Edmund White, Thu, Feb 10 at 6:30pm from BAMCafe, Brooklyn Academy of Music. Moderated by Michael Greenberg. An esteemed novelist and cultural critic, Edmund White is the author of many books, including the autobiographical novel A Boy’s Own Story, a biography of poet Arthur Rimbaud, a previous memoir, My Lives , and most recently, City Boy. White lives in New York City and teaches writing at Princeton University.

Elizabeth Strout, Thu, Jan 27 at 6:30pm from BAMCafe, Brooklyn Academy of Music. Moderated by Deborah Treisman. Elizabeth Strout is the winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for her novel Olive Kitteridge. She is also the author of two previous novels: Abide With Me, a national bestseller and Book Sense pick, and Amy and Isabelle, which won the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize and was a finalist for the PEN Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize in England. Her short stories have been published in a number of magazines, including The New Yorker. She was raised in small towns in New Hampshire and Maine and currently lives in New York City.