Fiction author bios Flashcards
Contemporary Nigerian writer. In addition to their short story collection, The Thing Around Your Neck, the author has written three award-winning novels and multiple essays. Their most recent work, Notes On Grief, an essay about losing their father, was published in 2021. The author is a recipient of the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship and was included in Fortune Magazine’s 2017 List of 50 World Leaders. They divide their time between the United States and Nigeria, where the author frequently teaches writing workshops.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Contemporary Native American writer. The author got their start in writing as a poet before transitioning to fiction. They also write essays and screenplays. They grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation and much of their work is about Native Americans. Their Young Adult novel The Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian won the U.S National Book Award for Young People. They based the screenplay for Smoke Signals off of the short story collection The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven.
Sherman Alexie
Contemporary Dominican-American writer. The author immigrated to New Jersey from the Dominican Republic when they were six years old, an experience that has influenced much of their work, including Drown and This is How You Lose Her. They won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for their novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. The author is currently a creative writing professor at M.I.T and the fiction editor at Boston Review.
Junot Diaz
Colombian writer, 1927-2014. The author was a journalist, novelist, and master of magical realism. They were praised for their ability to appeal to the common reader while also receiving critical acclaim. They were awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982. Their most famous works include One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
American writer, 1860-1935. The author wrote self-consciously feminist fiction that made them the leading writer and lecturer on women’s issues of their time. They wrote nonfiction work, like Women and Economics, as well as utopian novels, including Moving the Mountain and Herland. “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the author’s most famous story, tells a fictionalized version of their struggles with depression during their first marriage.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Contemporary Indian-American writer. The author’s first short story collection Interpreter of Maladies won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. Their novel The Namesake was adapted into a film, and their book The Lowland was a Man Booker Prize nominee. They generally write characters who are Indian immigrants and must navigate two or more cultures.
Jhumpa Lahiri
Fantasy stories, the author wrote The Dandenon Dynasty a Silkpunk epic fantasy series, as well as short story collections The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories and The Hidden Girl and Other Stories. They also penned the Star Wars novel The Legends of Luke Skywalker.
Ken Liu
Contemporary American writer. They are the bestselling author of more than a dozen books, including Ancient Highway, A Song I Knew by Heart, and Jewel. They were appointed to the National Council on the Arts in 2006 and serves as a nonfiction editor for the literary journal Crazyhorse. They currently teach at the College of Charleston.
Bret Lott
American writer, 1925-1964. The author is known for writing in the Southern Gothic style. They were a Catholic and often engaged with questions of faith and morals in their work. They wrote two novels and 35 short stories. Besides “A Good Man is Hard to Find” their most famous short stories are: “Good Country People” and “Everything that Rises Must Converge.”
Flannery O’Connor
Contemporary Taiwanese-American writer. The author has written four Sci-fi books: How to Live Safely in a Science Fiction Universe, Third Class Superhero, Sorry Please Thank You, and Interior Chinatown, which won the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction. Their fiction focuses on time, isolation, memory, and speculative technology. They received the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 award and was nominated for two Writers Guild of America awards for their work on the Westworld series.
Charles Yu
