Jennifer Egan is an American novelist and short-story writer. Egan's novel ''

A Visit from the Goon Squad ''A Visit from the Goon Squad'' is a 2011 Pulitzer Prize-winning work of fiction by American author Jennifer Egan. The book is a set of thirteen interrelated stories with a large set of characters all connected to Bennie Salazar, a record company ...

'' won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and

National Book Critics Circle Award The National Book Critics Circle Awards are a set of annual American literary awards by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote "the finest books and reviews published in English".PEN America PEN America (formerly PEN American Center), founded in 1922 and headquartered in New York City, is a nonprofit organization that works to defend and celebrate free expression in the United States and worldwide through the advancement of litera ...

Early life

After graduating from Lowell High School, she majored in English literature at the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

. While an undergraduate, Egan dated Steve Jobs, who installed a

Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and ...

computer in her bedroom. After graduating, Egan spent two years at St John's College, Cambridge, supported by a

Thouron Award The Thouron Award is a prestigious postgraduate scholarship established in 1960 by Sir John R.H. Thouron, K.B.E., and Esther du Pont Thouron. It was created to strengthen the "special relationship" between the United States and the United Kingdom ...

, where she earned an M.A. She came to New York in 1987 and worked an array of jobs, such as catering at the World Trade Center, while learning to write.

Career

Jennifer-egan litteratureXchange-2019 DSC00816

She has published short fiction in the ''

New Yorker New Yorker or ''variant'' primarily refers to: * A resident of the State of New York ** Demographics of New York (state) * A resident of New York City ** List of people from New York City * ''The New Yorker'', a magazine founded in 1925 * '' The ...

'', '' Harper's'', '' Zoetrope: All-Story'', and ''

Ploughshares ''Ploughshares'' is an American literary journal established in 1971 by DeWitt Henry and Peter O'Malley in The Plough and Stars, an Irish pub in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since 1989, ''Ploughshares'' has been based at Emerson College in Bos ...

'', among other periodicals, and her journalism appears frequently in the '' New York Times Magazine''. Egan's first novel, '' The Invisible Circus'', was released in 1995 and adapted into a film of the same name released in 2001. She has published one short story collection and six novels, among which '' Look at Me'' was a finalist for the

National Book Award The National Book Awards are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors. The Nat ...

in 2001. Egan has been hesitant to classify ''A Visit from the Goon Squad'' as either a novel or a short story collection, saying, "I wanted to avoid centrality. I wanted

polyphony Polyphony ( ) is a type of musical texture consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody, as opposed to a musical texture with just one voice, monophony, or a texture with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords, h ...

. I wanted a lateral feeling, not a forward feeling. My ground rules were: every piece has to be very different, from a different point of view. I actually tried to break that rule later; if you make a rule then you also should break it!" The book features genre-bending content such as a chapter entirely formatted as a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation. Of her inspiration and approach to the work, she said, "I don't experience time as linear. I experience it in layers that seem to coexist... One thing that facilitates that kind of time travel is music, which is why I think music ended up being such an important part of the book. Also, I was reading

Proust Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (; ; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist who wrote the monumental novel '' In Search of Lost Time'' (''À la recherche du temps perdu''; with the previous E ...

. He tries, very successfully in some ways, to capture the sense of time passing, the quality of consciousness, and the ways to get around linearity, which is the weird scourge of writing prose."

Awards

Egan received a

in 1986, was the recipient of a

National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal ...

Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1996. In 2002 she wrote a cover story on homeless children that received the Carroll Kowal Journalism Award. She was a fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the

New York Public Library The New York Public Library (NYPL) is a public library system in New York City. With nearly 53 million items and 92 locations, the New York Public Library is the second largest public library in the United States (behind the Library of Congress ...

in 2004–2005. Her 2008 story on bipolar children won an Outstanding Media Award from the

National Alliance on Mental Illness The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) is a United States-based nonprofit organization originally founded as a grassroots group by family members of people diagnosed with mental illness. NAMI identifies its mission as "providing advoc ...

. In 2011 she was a finalist for the

PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction is awarded annually by the PEN/Faulkner Foundation to the authors of the year's best works of fiction by living American citizens. The winner receives US$15,000 and each of four runners-up receives US$5000. Fi ...

. That same year she won the

Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made h ...

for ''A Visit from the Goon Squad''. Egan won the 2018 Andrew Carnegie Medal for '' Manhattan Beach''. The novel was also longlisted for the 2017

Reception

Academic literary critics have examined Egan's work in a variety of contexts. David Cowart has read Egan's project in ''A Visit from the Goon Squad'' as indebted to

modernist Modernism is both a philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, an ...

writing but as possessing a closer affinity to

postmodernism Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or Rhetorical modes, mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by philosophical skepticism, skepticis ...

, in which "she meets the parental postmoderns on their own ground; by the same token, she venerates the grandparental moderns even as she places their mythography under erasure and dismantles their supreme fictions," an aspect also touched upon by Adam Kelly. Baoyu Nie has focused, alternatively, on the ways in which "Egan draws the reader into the addressee role" through the use of second-person narrative technique in her

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

fiction. Finally,

Martin Paul Eve Martin Paul Eve (born 1986) is a British academic, writer, and disability rights campaigner. He is the Professor of Literature, Technology and Publishing at Birkbeck College, University of London and Visiting Professor of Digital Humanities at ...

has argued that the university itself is given "quantifiably more space within Egan's work than would be merited under strict societal mimesis", leading him to classify Egan's novels within the history of metafiction. In 2013, the first academic conference event dedicated to Egan's work was held at Birkbeck, University of London, entitled "Invisible Circus: An International Conference on the work of Jennifer Egan".

Personal life

Egan lives in

Clinton Hill, Brooklyn Clinton Hill is a neighborhood in north-central Brooklyn, a borough of New York City. It is bordered by the Brooklyn Navy Yard and the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway to the north, Williamsburg to the northeast, Classon Avenue and Bedford–Stuyves ...

with her husband and two sons.

Bibliography

Novels

* ''The Invisible Circus'' (1994) * '' Look at Me'' (2001) * '' The Keep'' (2006) * ''

'' (2010) * '' Manhattan Beach'' (2017) * '' The Candy House'' (2022)

Short fiction (partial list)

* ''

Emerald City The Emerald City (sometimes called the City of Emeralds) is the capital city of the fictional Land of Oz in L. Frank Baum's Oz books, first described in ''The Wonderful Wizard of Oz'' (1900). Fictional description Located in the center of the L ...

'' (short story collection; 1993, UK; released in US in 1996) * "

Black Box In science, computing, and engineering, a black box is a system which can be viewed in terms of its inputs and outputs (or transfer characteristics), without any knowledge of its internal workings. Its implementation is "opaque" (black). The te ...

" (short story; 2012, US; released on ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

''s

account)

References

Narrative Magazine ''Narrative'' is an online magazine and website that is dedicated to advancing the literary arts in the digital age and publishes fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, and art. It was founded in 2003. History and profile Founded in 2003, the l ...

''.
Jennifer Egan: Chronological Bibliography of First Editions
{{DEFAULTSORT:Egan, Jennifer Living people 20th-century American novelists 20th-century American short story writers 20th-century American women writers 21st-century American novelists 21st-century American short story writers 21st-century American women writers Alumni of St John's College, Cambridge American women novelists American women short story writers Lowell High School (San Francisco) alumni National Endowment for the Arts Fellows Novelists from Illinois Novelists from New York (state) PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction winners People from Clinton Hill, Brooklyn Pulitzer Prize for Fiction winners University of Pennsylvania alumni Writers from Brooklyn Writers from Chicago Writers from San Francisco 1962 births