Ayşegül Savaş is a Turkish writer who writes in English.

Education and influences

She was raised in Turkey and Denmark, then attended

Middlebury College Middlebury College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Middlebury, Vermont, United States. Founded in 1800 by Congregationalism in the United States, Congregationalists, Middlebury w ...

in Vermont. She graduated in 2007. She worked as a staff writer on ''The Middlebury Campus'', writing often for the paper's arts section. She majored in sociology and anthropology. During her years at Middlebury she studied abroad in Russia (Yaroslavl) and France (Paris). She received an MFA at the University of San Francisco. Among authors who have influenced her, she names

Patrick Modiano Jean Patrick Modiano (; born 30 July 1945), generally known as Patrick Modiano, is a French novelist and recipient of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is a noted writer of autofiction, the blend of autobiography and historical fiction. I ...

, and

Enrique Vila-Matas Enrique Vila-Matas (born 31 March 1948 in Barcelona) is a Spanish writer. He has written several award-winning books that mix genres and has been branded as one of the most original and prominent writers in the Spanish language. He is a found ...

Novels

Her first novel was ''Walking on the Ceiling'' (2019), published by

Riverhead Books Riverhead Books is an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) founded in 1994 by Susan Petersen Kennedy. Writers published by Riverhead include Ali Sethi, Marlon James, Junot Díaz, George Saunders, Khaled Hosseini, Nick Hornby, Anne Lamott, Carl ...

. A reviewer in Booklist called it "deceptively simple and subtly profound." The second, published by the same publishing house, is titled ''White on White'' (2021). Anthony Cummins of ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'' reviewed it favorably, noting that the writing style in the book is like austere painting. Her third novel, ''The Anthropologists'' (2024), was published by Bloomsbury, and was nominated for th
National Book Critics Circle Award
It was one o
Barack Obama's favorite books of 2024

one of the best books of the yea
by the New YorkerTIME MagazinePublishers Weekly
and #1 book of 2024 according t

(New York magazine).

Short fiction and essays

She has published short stories and essays in publications that include ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...

The Paris Review ''The Paris Review'' is a quarterly English-language literary magazine established in Paris in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton. In its first five years, ''The Paris Review'' published new works by Jack Kerouac, ...

,'' ''

The Yale Review ''The Yale Review'' is the oldest literary journal in the United States. It is published by Johns Hopkins University Press. It was founded in 1819 as ''The Christian Spectator'' to support Evangelicalism. Over time it began to publish more on ...

Los Angeles Review of Books The ''Los Angeles Review of Books'' (''LARB'' is a literary review magazine covering the national and international book scenes. A preview version launched on Tumblr in April 2011, and the official website followed one year later in April 201 ...

Literary Hub ''Literary Hub'' or ''LitHub'' is a daily literary website that was launched in 2015 by Grove Atlantic president and publisher Morgan Entrekin, American Society of Magazine Editors Hall of Fame editor Terry McDonell, and '' Electric Literatur ...

Granta ''Granta'' is a literary magazine and publisher in the United Kingdom whose mission centres on its "belief in the power and urgency of the story, both in fiction and non-fiction, and the story's supreme ability to describe, illuminate and make ...

, and The Dublin Review'' among others.

Non-fiction

In 2024, Savaş published a non-fiction work, title
The Wilderness
about the first 40 days of the postpartum and the mythology surrounding this period.

Bibliography

* * * *

References

External links

Savas' Homepage

"Ayşegül Savaş on Desire and Disappointment"; interview with Cressida Leyshon in ''The New Yorker'' (January 24, 2022)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Savaş, Ayşegül Middlebury College alumni University of San Francisco alumni 21st-century Turkish women writers The New Yorker people Granta people Writers from Paris 21st-century Turkish short story writers Turkish women essayists Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Turkish women novelists Turkish women short story writers