The Center for Fiction Presents Claire Messud on This Strange Eventful History with Jennifer Egan

In Conversation

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  Claire Messud

  Claire Messud

  Claire Messud is the author of seven works of fiction. She teaches at Harvard and is the recipient of Guggenheim and Radcliffe Fellowships and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters. She’s been longlisted for the Booker Prize and has twice been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. This Stanger Eventful History is her first work of fiction in seven years.

  
  

  Photo Credit: Lucian Wood

  
  
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  Jennifer Egan

  Jennifer Egan

  Jennifer Egan is the author of several novels and a short story collection. Her 2017 novel, Manhattan Beach, a New York Times bestseller, was awarded the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and was chosen as New York City’s One Book One New York read. Her previous novel, A Visit From the Goon Squad, won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was recently named one of the best books of the decade by Time magazine and Entertainment Weekly. Her new novel, The Candy House, a companion to A Visit From the Goon Squad, was named one of the New York Times 10 Best Books of 2022 and one of President Obama’s favorite reads of the year. She recently completed a term as President of PEN America and is currently Artist-in-Residence in the English Department at the University of Pennsylvania. Also a journalist, her year-long reporting on street homelessness and supportive housing in New York City was published in the New Yorker in September, 2023.

  
  

  Photo Credit: Pieter M. van Hattem