The Authors Who Turn Bad News into Beautiful Art

Alexandra Chang’s debut novel, Days of Distraction, was published in March and recommended by publications from Vanity Fair to Wired to O, the Oprah Magazine. She’s from Northern California and currently lives in Ithaca, New York, with her husband and their dog and cat.

Amy Parker is the author of Beasts and Children, which was selected as a 2016 New York Times Editor’s Choice. She spent four years living in a Soto Monastery before leaving for the Iowa Writers’ Workshop where she was a Meta-Rosenberg Fellow. Her work has appeared in Narrative, Five Chapters, and Los Angeles Review Print Quarterly, among other publications.

Ben Fountain's most recent book is Beautiful Country Burn Again, a reported narrative of the 2016 presidential election. He is also the author of the short-story collection Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award and a Whiting Writers Award, and the novel Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and a finalist for the National Book Award.

Benjamin Percy is the author most recently of The Dark Net and the story collection Suicide Woods. He writes Wolverine and X-Force for Marvel Comics. His honors include a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Whiting Award, the Plimpton Prize, two Pushcart Prizes, and inclusion in Best American Short Stories and Best American Comics.

Bill Cheng is the author of Southern Cross the Dog, which was longlisted for the PEN Open Book Award. He was the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Grant and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction.

Carmen Maria Machado is the author of In the Dream House a memoir, and the collection Her Body and Other Parties, which was a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award. She’s the writer in residence at the University of Pennsylvania.

Claire Lombardo is the author of The Most Fun We Ever Had, which debuted on The New York Times best-seller list in June 2019 and is being developed into an HBO series.

Colum McCann is the author of six novels, including Let the Great World Spin, which won the 2009 National Book Award, and three story collections. His new novel is Apeirogon.

Curtis Sittenfeld is the best-selling author of six novels, most recently Rodham. Her story collection You Think It, I’ll Say It was picked for Reese Witherspoon's Book Club. Her books have appeared on numerous Best Books of the Year lists and have been optioned for television and film. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, and the Best American Short Stories, of which she is the 2020 guest editor.

Dana Spiotta is the author of five novels, including Wayward, which will be published in 2021, Innocents and Others, and Eat the Document. She teaches creative writing at Syracuse University.

Daniel Torday is the author of Boomer1 and The Last Flight of Poxl West, a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice. Torday's work has appeared in The New York Times, NPR, The Paris Review Daily, and Tin House, along with the Best American Short Stories and Best American Essays. A two-time National Jewish Book Award winner, he teaches at Bryn Mawr College.

Dantiel W. Moniz’s first story collection, Milk Blood Heat, will be published in February 2021. The recipient of the Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction, the Cecelia Joyce Johnson Emerging Writer Award by the Key West Literary Seminars, and a Tin House Scholarship, her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The Paris Review, Tin House, Ploughshares, The Yale Review, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, and elsewhere.

David Searcy is the author of the novels Ordinary Horror and Last Things, and most recently Shame and Wonder, a book of essays. His writing has appeared in The Paris Review, Esquire, The New York Times, and Harper’s, among other publications, and his next book, the extended essay The Tiny Bee That Hovers at the Center of the World, will be published in 2021.

Elliot Ackerman is the author of four novels, including most recently Red Dress in Black and White and Dark at the Crossing, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, as well as the memoir Places and Names. He is a former White House Fellow and Marine, and served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he received the Silver Star, the Bronze Star for Valor, and the Purple Heart.

Emily Nemens, the editor of The Paris Review, is the author of The Cactus League, a New York Times Book Review Editor's Pick. She was previously the coeditor of The Southern Review. Her work has been published in Esquire, n+1, The Gettysburg Review, Hobart, and elsewhere.

Hannah Lillith Assadi’s first novel, Sonora, received the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction. In 2018, she was named a National Book Foundation 5 under 35 honoree. Her second novel, The Stars Are Not Yet Bells, will be published in 2021.

Idra Novey is the author of the novel Those Who Knew, a finalist for the 2019 Clark Fiction Prize, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and named a Best Book of the Year by over a dozen media outlets, including NPR, Esquire, BBC, and O, The Oprah Magazine. Her first novel, Ways to Disappear, received the 2017 Sami Rohr Prize, the 2016 Brooklyn Eagles Prize, and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for First Fiction. She teaches fiction at Princeton University.

Ingrid Rojas Contreras is the author of Fruit of the Drunken Tree, a silver medal winner in First Fiction from the California Book Awards and a New York Times editor's choice. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The Cut, The Believer, Paris Review Daily, and elsewhere. She was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia.

J. Courtney Sullivan is a New York Times best-selling author of four novels, most recently Saints for All Occasions, which was named one of the ten best books of the year by The Washington Post and nominated for a New England Book Award. Her new novel, Friends and Strangers, will be released in June.

Jennine Capó Crucet is the author of the novel Make Your Home Among Strangers, the story collection How to Leave Hialeah, and most recently, the essay collection My Time Among the Whites. A contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, she’s a recipient of the Iowa Short Fiction Prize, the John Gardner Book Award, and an O. Henry Prize. She teaches English and ethnic studies at the University of Nebraska.

Jess Walter is the author of six novels, one book of short stories, and one nonfiction book. His novels include the New York Times best seller Beautiful Ruins and Citizen Vince, which won the Edgar Allan Poe Award. His new novel, The Cold Millions, will be published in October 2020.

John Wray is the author of five novels, most recently Godsend. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, a Cullman Fellowship from the New York Public Library, and a Mary Ellen von der Heyden Fellowship from the American Academy in Berlin, he was named one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists in 2007.

Justin Torres is the author of We the Animals, which has been translated into fifteen languages and was recently adapted into a film. He was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford, a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and a Cullman Center Fellow at the New York Public Library. In 2012, the National Book Foundation named him a “5 Under 35” honoree.

Kashana Cauley is a writer for the upcoming Fox comedy The Great North, a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, and a GQ contributor. She’s written for The Daily Show with Trevor Noah and Pod Save America on HBO as well as The Atlantic, Esquire, The New Yorker, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, and many other publications.

Kirstin Valdez Quade is the author of Night at the Fiestas, which won the John Leonard Prize and the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction. A recipient of the American Academy’s Rome Prize and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, she was honored as a “5 Under 35” honoree by the National Book Foundation and teaches creative writing at Princeton.

Laura van den Berg's most recent novel, The Third Hotel, was named a best book of 2018 by more than a dozen publications and was a finalist for the Young Lions Fiction Award. A recipient of the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters and an O. Henry Award, she teaches fiction at Harvard. Her new collection, I Hold a Wolf by the Ears, will be published in 2020.

Lea Carpenter is the author of the novels Eleven Days and red white blue. She is working on a story collection.

Lisa Taddeo is the author of the international best seller Three Women. Her nonfiction has been included in the Best American Sports Writing and Best American Political Writing anthologies, and her short stories have won two Pushcart Prizes.

Manuel Gonzales is the author of the novel The Regional Office Is Under Attack! and the story collection The Miniature Wife, and winner of the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction and the John Gardner Fiction Book Award. He teaches literature at Bennington College and is a full-time faculty member at the Bennington Writing Seminars.

Mary-Louise Parker, the author of Dear Mr. You, is a Tony, Emmy, Obie, and Golden Globe award-winning actress. Her writing has appeared in Esquire, The Riveter, Bust, and Bullett.

Matthew Baker is the author of the story collections Why Visit America and Hybrid Creatures, as well as the Edgar Award–nominated children’s novel If You Find This. Named one of Variety’s “10 Storytellers to Watch,” he’s published fiction in The Paris Review, American Short Fiction, and One Story, among other publications. Born in the Great Lakes region of the United States, he currently lives in New York City.

Miguel Syjuco is the author of the novel Ilustrado, winner of the Man Asian Literary Prize, and a New York Times Notable Book. A contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, his op-eds and journalism have appeared in Time, Newsweek, the BBC, and other outlets. He’s an advisor to the Resilience Fund, a project of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, and teaches at New York University Abu Dhabi.

Nam Le is the author of The Boat, which has been translated into 15 languages and received more than a dozen major awards in Australia, America, and Europe, including the PEN/Malamud Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Dylan Thomas Prize, and the Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Award. The Boat was selected as the best debut of the year by New York and a book of the year by more than 30 venues around the world.

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah is the New York Times best-selling author of Friday BlackFriday Black, which won the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Award for Best First Book. Named a 2018 “5 Under 35” honoree by the National Book Foundation, Adjei-Brenyah’s work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Esquire, The Paris Review, and Guernica.

Rachel Khong’s debut novel, Goodbye, Vitamin, won the 2017 California Book Award for First Fiction and was a Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist for First Fiction. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Tin House, American Short Fiction, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Believer, and California Sunday.

Ramona Ausubel is the author of two novels and two short-story collections, including Awayland and No One Is Here Except All of Us, winner of the PEN Center USA Fiction Award. Her stories have been published in The New Yorker, One Story, The Paris Review Daily, and Best American Fantasy.

Rion Amilcar Scott is the author of the story collections The World Doesn’t Require You and Insurrections, which was awarded the 2017 PEN/Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction and the 2017 Hillsdale Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He teaches creative writing at the University of Maryland.

Ron Rash is the author of the 2009 PEN/Faulkner finalist and New York Times best seller Serena, along with numerous other novels, poetry, and short-story collections, including most recently, In the Valley. Twice the recipient of the O. Henry Prize, he teaches at Western Carolina University.

Roxane Gay is the author of four books, including The New York Times best sellers Bad Feminist and Hunger. She is also the author of World of Wakanda for Marvel. A contributing opinion writer for The New York Times and the editor of Gay Mag, her writing appears in Best American Mystery Stories 2014, Best American Short Stories 2012, and Best Sex Writing 2012, among other publications.

Shruti Swamy’s story collection, A House Is a Body, was published in August. The winner of two O. Henry Awards, her work has appeared in The Paris Review, the Kenyon Review online, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. Her novel, The Archer, is forthcoming.

Sloane Crosley is the author of three essay collections, including I Was Told There’d Be Cake and Look Alive Out There, both finalists for the Thurber Prize for American Humor, as well as the novel The Clasp.

Thomas Mallon is the author most recently of Landfall, the third novel in his Washington trilogy about Nixon, Reagan, and George W. Bush. His honors include Guggenheim and Rockefeller fellowships, the National Book Critics Circle citation for reviewing, and the Vursell award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2012 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Tom Rachman is the author of four works of fiction including his best-selling debut, The Imperfectionists, and most recently The Italian Teacher. Before turning full-time to fiction, he served as an international editor at the AP and has reported from across the globe. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and Newyorker.com, among other publications.

Tommy Orange is the author of There There, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, and was named one of the ten best books of 2018 by The New York Times. He is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma and currently lives in Murphys, California.

Vauhini Vara, a former editor at the New Yorker and reporter at The Wall Street Journal, has published nonfiction and fiction in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Businessweek, McSweeney’s, and Tin House. The winner of an O. Henry Award for fiction, she’s received fellowships from the Rona Jaffe Foundation and the McGraw Center for Business Journalism.

Weike Wang is the author of the novel Chemistry, which won the 2018 Pen/Hemingway Award. Wang won a 2018 Whiting Award and is a “5 Under 35” National Book Foundation honoree. She teaches creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania.