Laura van den Berg is an American fiction writer. She is the author of five works of fiction. Her first two collections of short stories were each shortlisted for the

Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award __NOTOC__ The Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award—named in honour of Frank O'Connor, who devoted much of his work to the form—was an international literary award presented for the best short story collection. It was presented betwe ...

, in 2010 and 2014. In 2021, she was awarded the Strauss Livings Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Biography

Laura van den Berg was born and raised in Florida. She has a BA from

Rollins College Rollins College is a private college in Winter Park, Florida. It was founded in November 1885 and has about 30 undergraduate majors and several graduate programs. It is Florida's fourth oldest post-secondary institution. History Rollins Colle ...

(2005) and an M.F.A. from

Emerson College Emerson College is a private college with its main campus in Boston, Massachusetts. It also maintains campuses in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California and Well, Limburg, Netherlands ( Kasteel Well). Founded in 1880 by Charles Wesley Emerson as a ...

. Her stories have been published in ''The Paris Review, McSweeney's, BOMB, Virginia Quarterly Review, Conjunctions'', ''American Short Fiction'', ''Ploughshares'', ''Glimmer Train'' and ''One Story''. Her first collection of short stories, ''What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us,'' was published in 2009, and her second collection, ''The Isle of Youth'', was published in 2013. A third short story collection, ''I Hold a Wolf By the Ears,'' was published in 2020. Her other books include two novels, ''Find Me'' (2015) and ''The Third Hotel'' (2018), which was a finalist for the Young Lions Fiction Award. van den Berg has also published a chapbook of

flash fiction Flash fiction is a fictional work of extreme brevity that still offers character and plot development. Identified varieties, many of them defined by word count, include the six-word story; the 280-character story (also known as " twitterature"); ...

, ''There Will Be No More Good Nights Without Good Nights'' (2012). Van den Berg lives in

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

, Massachusetts with her husband,

Paul Yoon Paul Yoon (born 1980) is an American fiction writer. In 2010 The National Book Foundation named him a 5 Under 35 honoree. Early life and education Yoon's grandfather was a North Korean refugee who resettled in South Korea, where he later founded ...

Awards and honors

*2010

The Story Prize The Story Prize is an annual book award established in 2004 that honors the author of an outstanding collection of short fiction with a $20,000 cash award. Each of two runners-up receives $5,000. Eligible books must be written in English and first p ...

longlist for ''What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us'' *2010

shortlist for ''What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us'' *2014

shortlist for ''The Isle of Youth'' *2014

American Academy of Arts and Letters The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, music, and art. Its fixed number membership is elected for lifetime appointments. Its headqu ...

Rosenthal Family Foundation Award winner for ''The Isle of Youth'' *2019 Young Lions Fiction Award shortlist *2021 American Academy of Arts and Letter
Strauss Livings Award
*2021

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

Selected works

*''What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us'', Dzanc Books (2009) *''There Will Be No More Good Nights Without Good Nights'', Origami Zoo Press / Bull City Press, (2012) *'' The Isle of Youth'', Farrar, Straus and Giroux, (2013) *''Find Me'', Farrar, Straus and Giroux, (2015), novel *''The Third Hotel'', Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018, *''I Hold a Wolf by the Ears'', Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020,

References

External links

Van den Berg's website
1983 births Living people American women short story writers 21st-century American novelists 21st-century American women writers Novelists from Florida Emerson College alumni American women novelists Rollins College alumni 21st-century American short story writers Harvard University faculty American women academics O. Henry Award winners {{US-story-writer-stub