Téa Obreht (born Tea Bajraktarević; 30 September 1985) is a Serbian-American

novelist A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living writing novels and other fiction, while others aspire to ...

. Her debut novel, ''

The Tiger's Wife ''The Tiger's Wife'' is the debut novel of Serbian-American writer Téa Obreht. It was published in 2011 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, a British imprint of Orion Books, and by Random House in America. Obreht won the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction fo ...

'',Hamilton, Ted (25 March 2009)
"Student Artist Spotlight: Tea Bajraktarevic"
(interview). ''Cornell Daily Sun''. Archived 7 March 2012. Retrieved 12 April 2014. won the 2011

Orange Prize for Fiction The Women's Prize for Fiction (previously with sponsor names Orange Prize for Fiction (1996–2006 and 2009–12), Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction (2007–08) and Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction (2014–2017)) is one of the United Kingdom's m ...

and was a 2011 National Book Award finalist. Obreht was a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree and was named by ''The New Yorker'' as one of the twenty best American fiction writers under forty. Her second novel, ''

Inland Inland may refer to: Places Sweden * Inland Fräkne Hundred, a hundred of Bohuslän in Sweden * Inland Northern Hundred, a hundred of Bohuslän in Sweden * Inland Southern Hundred, a hundred of Bohuslän in Sweden * Inland Torpe Hundred, a hundred ...

'', was released in 2019.

Biography

Téa Obreht was born Tea Bajraktarević in the autumn of 1985, in

Belgrade Belgrade ( , ;, ; Names of European cities in different languages: B, names in other languages) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Serbia, largest city in Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers a ...

SR Serbia , life_span = 1944–1992 , status = Constituent state of Yugoslavia , p1 = Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia , flag_p1 = Flag of German Reich (1935–1945).svg , p2 ...

SFR Yugoslavia The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, commonly referred to as SFR Yugoslavia or simply as Yugoslavia, was a country in Central and Southeast Europe. It emerged in 1945, following World War II, and lasted until 1992, with the breakup of Yug ...

, the only child of a single mother, Maja Obreht, while her father, a

Bosniak The Bosniaks ( bs, Bošnjaci, Cyrillic: Бошњаци, ; , ) are a South Slavic ethnic group native to the Southeast European historical region of Bosnia, which is today part of Bosnia and Herzegovina, who share a common Bosnian ancestry, cu ...

, was "never part of the picture". She was close to her maternal grandparents, especially to her grandfather Štefan Obreht, a

Roman Catholic Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...

Slovene of

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

origin, and to her grandmother, Zahida, a

Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...

Bosniak. When the

Yugoslav Wars The Yugoslav Wars were a series of separate but related#Naimark, Naimark (2003), p. xvii. ethnic conflicts, wars of independence, and Insurgency, insurgencies that took place in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, SFR Yugoslavia from ...

started in the early 1990s, there was no fighting in her home town of Belgrade or in

Serbia Serbia (, ; Serbian language, Serbian: , , ), officially the Republic of Serbia (Serbian language, Serbian: , , ), is a landlocked country in Southeast Europe, Southeastern and Central Europe, situated at the crossroads of the Pannonian Bas ...

, but there was concern due to her grandparents' religions, as Roman Catholicism and Islam were closely associated with

Croatia , image_flag = Flag of Croatia.svg , image_coat = Coat of arms of Croatia.svg , anthem = "Lijepa naša domovino"("Our Beautiful Homeland") , image_map = , map_caption = , capit ...

and

Bosnia and Herzegovina Bosnia and Herzegovina ( sh, / , ), abbreviated BiH () or B&H, sometimes called Bosnia–Herzegovina and often known informally as Bosnia, is a country at the crossroads of south and southeast Europe, located in the Balkans. Bosnia and H ...

, respectively, which was a serious distinction at the time of the war. They didn't flee immediately, but decided to move to

Cyprus Cyprus ; tr, Kıbrıs (), officially the Republic of Cyprus,, , lit: Republic of Cyprus is an island country located south of the Anatolian Peninsula in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Its continental position is disputed; while it is geo ...

for precautionary reasons when her mother found a job there. Eighteen months later they moved to

Cairo Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the largest urban agglomeration in Africa, the Arab world and the Middle East: The Greater Cairo metro ...

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...

, guided by her grandfather's job as an aviation engineer. Her grandparents permanently returned to Belgrade in 1997, while she and her mother settled in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

, first in

Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...

, where they joined extended family, and later in

Palo Alto Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. The city was estab ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

,Yabroff, Jennie (9 March 2011)
"A Fierce Debut"
(interview). ''The Daily Beast''. Retrieved 28 March 2011. where her mother was remarried to a Serbian

Orthodox Orthodox, Orthodoxy, or Orthodoxism may refer to: Religion * Orthodoxy, adherence to accepted norms, more specifically adherence to creeds, especially within Christianity and Judaism, but also less commonly in non-Abrahamic religions like Neo-pa ...

man. Obreht's grandfather died in 2006, and on his deathbed asked her to write under his surname, Obreht. She later decided to change her last name legally as well. After graduating from the

University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in C ...

, Obreht received a MFA in fiction from the creative writing program at

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

in 2009. She currently serves as the Endowed Chair of Creative Writing at Texas State University in San Marcos. She is married to writer Dan Sheehan. Obreht's work has appeared in ''The New Yorker'', ''Zoetrope: All-Story'', ''Harpers'', ''The New York Times'' and ''The Guardian'', and in anthologies ''The Best American Short Stories'' and ''The Best American Non-Required Reading''."20 Under 40 Q.&A.: Téa Obreht"
(interview). ''The New Yorker''. June 14, 2010. Retrieved 28 March 2011.
Téa Obreht (teaobreht.com). Retrieved 28 March 2011. Among many influences, Obreht has mentioned in press interviews the Colombian novelist

Gabriel García Márquez Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez (; 6 March 1927 – 17 April 2014) was a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter, and journalist, known affectionately as Gabo () or Gabito () throughout Latin America. Considered one ...

, the Yugoslav

Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...

winner

Ivo Andrić Ivo Andrić ( sr-Cyrl, Иво Андрић, ; born Ivan Andrić; 9 October 1892 – 13 March 1975) was a Yugoslav novelist, poet and short story writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1961. His writings dealt mainly with life in ...

Raymond Chandler Raymond Thornton Chandler (July 23, 1888 – March 26, 1959) was an American-British novelist and screenwriter. In 1932, at the age of forty-four, Chandler became a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive durin ...

Ernest Hemingway Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century fic ...

Isak Dinesen Baroness Karen Christenze von Blixen-Finecke (born Dinesen; 17 April 1885 – 7 September 1962) was a Danish author who wrote works in Danish and English. She is also known under her pen names Isak Dinesen, used in English-speaking countrie ...

, Russian writer

Mikhail Bulgakov Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov ( rus, links=no, Михаил Афанасьевич Булгаков, p=mʲɪxɐˈil ɐfɐˈnasʲjɪvʲɪtɕ bʊlˈɡakəf; – 10 March 1940) was a Soviet writer, medical doctor, and playwright active in the fir ...

, and the children's writer

Roald Dahl Roald Dahl (13 September 1916 – 23 November 1990) was a British novelist, short-story writer, poet, screenwriter, and wartime fighter ace of Norwegian descent. His books have sold more than 250 million copies worldwide. Dahl has be ...

.Codinha, Cotton (20 July 2009)
"I Dreamed of Africa"
(interview). ''The Atlantic''. Retrieved 28 March 2011. In October 2011, Obreht was a special guest at a charity lunch organized by Lifeline Humanitarian Organization in New York under the patronage of Katherine, Crown Princess of Yugoslavia, to aid orphaned children in

. Obreht participated by auctioning off a private lecture by her at a book club. Obreht's latest novel, ''

'', was released in August 2019. It was shortlisted for the 2020

Dylan Thomas Prize The Dylan Thomas Prize is a leading prize for young writers presented annually. The prize, named in honour of the Welsh writer and poet Dylan Thomas, brings international prestige and a remuneration of £30,000 (~$46,000). It is open to published w ...

Books

''The Tiger's Wife'' (2010)

''The Tiger's Wife'' was published by

Weidenfeld & Nicolson Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd (established 1949), often shortened to W&N or Weidenfeld, is a British publisher of fiction and reference books. It has been a division of the French-owned Orion Publishing Group since 1991. History George Weidenfeld a ...

in 2010."Tiger's wife"

WorldCat WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions (mostly libraries), in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the OCL ...

. Retrieved 12 April 2014.
"View all editions and formats" shows that others were published 2011 and later. It is a novel set in an unnamed Balkan country, in the present and half a century ago, and features a young doctor's relationship with her grandfather and the stories he tells her. These concern a "deathless man" who meets him several times in different places and never grows old, and a deaf-mute girl from his childhood village who befriends a tiger that escaped from a zoo. It was largely written while she was at Cornell,Flanagan, Mark
"Tea Obreht"
''Contemporary Literature''. About.com. Retrieved 28 March 2011. and excerpted in ''The New Yorker'' in June 2009.Lee, Stephan (4 March 2011)
"Téa Obreht, author of 'The Tiger's Wife', on craft, age, and early success"
(interview). ''Entertainment Weekly''. Retrieved 28 March 2011. Asked to summarize it by a university journalist, Obreht replied, "It's a family saga that takes place in a fictionalized province of the Balkans. It's about a female narrator and her relationship to her grandfather, who's a doctor. It's a saga about doctors and their relationships to death throughout all these wars in the Balkans." ''The Tiger's Wife'' won the British

in 2011 (for 2010 publications). Obreht was the youngest winner of the annual prize (established 1996), which recognizes "excellence, originality and accessibility in women's writing from throughout the world"."Téa Obreht wins 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction"
(2011 archive, contemporary). Orange Prize for Fiction (orangeprize.co.uk). Archived 10 February 2013. Retrieved 12 April 2014. Late in 2011 she was a finalist for that year's U.S.

National Book Award for Fiction The National Book Award for Fiction is one of five annual National Book Awards, which recognize outstanding literary work by United States citizens. Since 1987 the awards have been administered and presented by the National Book Foundation, but ...

."National Book Awards – 2011"

National Book Foundation The National Book Foundation (NBF) is an American nonprofit organization established, "to raise the cultural appreciation of great writing in America". Established in 1989 by National Book Awards, Inc.,Edwin McDowell. "Book Notes: 'The Joy Luc ...

. Retrieved 12 April 2014. Contemporary archive including video record of Obreht reading from ''The Tiger's Wife''.

''Inland'' (2019)

'' was published on August 13, 2019 by

Random House Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Germ ...

. The novel is set in the

Arizona Territory The Territory of Arizona (also known as Arizona Territory) was a territory of the United States that existed from February 24, 1863, until February 14, 1912, when the remaining extent of the territory was admitted to the Union as the state of ...

in the 1800s.

Bibliography

Novels

* *

Short stories

*
The Laugh
, ''The Atlantic'', Fiction Issue (August 2009) *
The Sentry
, ''The Guardian'', Summer Short Story Special (Summer 2010) *
Blue Water Djinn
, ''The New Yorker'' (August 2, 2010) * "Blue Water Djinn", ''20 Under 40: Stories from the New Yorker'', edited by Deborah Treisman, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010, pp. 285–305
Items Awaiting Protective Enclosure
, ''Zoetrope: All-Story'' (Spring 2017)

Essays and reporting

*
Twilight of The Vampires: Hunting the Real-Life Undead
, ''Harper's Magazine'' (November 2010)
American Idol: Reason to Believe
, ''Vogue'' (May 2012) *Online version is titled "David Attenborough’s exploration of nature’s marvels and brutality".

References

External links

Téa Obreht
official website
Archive
at ''

The Atlantic ''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...

'' *
2011 radio interview
(one hour) at

The Bat Segundo Show ''The Bat Segundo Show'' was a podcast based in New York City run by writer and literary critic Edward Champion between 2004 and 2012. It was revived in mid-2013. The program features comprehensive interviews with prominent figures in arts and ...

Tea Obreht Reads From Her Novel, 'The Tiger's Wife'
''

PBS NewsHour ''PBS NewsHour'' is an American evening television news program broadcast on over 350 PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virg ...

'', 1 April 2011
2011 Orange Prize Winner

, 8 June 2011 * * (one title) {{DEFAULTSORT:Obreht, Tea Living people 1985 births 21st-century American novelists 21st-century American short story writers 21st-century American women writers American women novelists American women short story writers Cornell University alumni Exophonic writers Serbian emigrants to the United States Serbian people of Bosniak descent Writers from Belgrade The New Yorker people Novelists from New York (state) Serbian women writers Serbian people of German descent Serbian people of Slovenian descent American people of Bosniak descent American people of German descent American people of Slovenian descent