Amity Gaige

Last updated
Amity Gaige
AmityGaigeandAdamHaslett.GreenlightBookstore.02.28.2013.jpg
Amity Gaige and Adam Haslett in Conversation at Greenlight Bookstore - February 28, 2013
Born1972 (age 51–52)
Charlotte, North Carolina, U.S.
Alma mater Brown University
Iowa Writers' Workshop
GenreNovel
Notable awards5 Under 35 Honoree
SpouseTim Watt

Amity Gaige (born 1972) is an American novelist, known for her books O My Darling, The Folded World, Schroder, and Sea Wife. She is a 2016 Guggenheim Fellow in Fiction. She is currently Lecturer in English at Yale University. [1]

Contents

Early life

Amity Gaige was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, United States, to an academic father and a psychologist mother. The Gaige family moved several times before settling in Reading, Pennsylvania. She graduated from Brown University, where she studied English and theater. She later obtained an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop (1999).[ citation needed ] [2]

Career

Her first novel, O My Darling (Other Press, 2005) [3] won her a place in the inaugural year of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 Awards. [4]

Her second novel, The Folded World, was published in 2007 (Other Press, Random House), [5] and garnered independent publishing awards that year. [6] [7]

Her third novel, Schroder (Twelve Books, 2013) [8] was a shortlist nominee for Britain's inaugural GB£40,000 Folio Prize in 2014. The novel stirred controversy in its depiction of a reckless young father who flees with his six-year-old daughter on a road trip through New England after a custody battle. The author drew inspiration from the real-life Christian Gerhartsreiter story, though the book is not a novelization of that story. In style and form, Schroder drew comparison to works by Nabokov. [9] [10] The Los Angeles Times wrote, "Schroder’s closest literary relative is probably Lolita (minus the pedophilia)," [11] and Kathryn Schulz suggested that Gaige intended Schroder as an homage and an "appropriation" of Lolita in New York Magazine, which published a scratched-out image of Nabokov's cover art. [12] Gaige also cited Pale Fire as an influence in an interview with The New York Times' John Williams. [13] The book was sold pre-publication for translation into fifteen languages, and was endorsed on the Dutch television show De Wereld Draait Door, [14] sending the book into numerous reprintings. In the U.S., the book won endorsements from Jonathan Franzen and Jennifer Egan, [15] and was reviewed in nearly every major print outlet, making it one of the most heavily reviewed books of the year. [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] According to WorldCat, the book is held in 3,873 libraries, with editions in 8 languages. [23]

Her fourth novel, Sea Wife, was published in 2020 (Knopf). [24] The novel was selected as a Group Text pick by Elisabeth Egan of The New York Times, who wrote in her review, "Gaige tows you to tragedy with the graceful crawl of a poet and the motorboat intensity of a suspense author. And yet, when you find yourself at the deep end of this book, gasping for breath, you will still be shocked by what you find at the bottom.” [25] The maritime metaphors continued in a People Magazine review, which selected Sea Wife as Book of the Week, stating “Gaige’s razor-sharp novel is wise to marital and broader politics. But it’s also such gripping escapism that it feels like a lifeboat.” In an interview with Susan Choi in The Millions, [26] Gaige talked about the research involved in writing a book set at sea, "It’s possible that the tension the reader feels in reading Sea Wife runs parallel to the tension of the author trying to write it. Maybe I’ve bought into a kind of Stanislavskian theory of needing the stakes of my writing to be as high as those of my characters. The process was not without casualty."

Awards and honors

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Miriam Toews</span> Canadian writer (born 1964)

Miriam Toews is a Canadian writer and author of nine books, including A Complicated Kindness (2004), All My Puny Sorrows (2014), and Women Talking (2018). She has won a number of literary prizes including the Governor General's Award for Fiction and the Writers' Trust Engel/Findley Award for her body of work. Toews is also a three-time finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and a two-time winner of the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Saunders</span> American writer (born 1958)

George Saunders is an American writer of short stories, essays, novellas, children's books, and novels. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, McSweeney's, and GQ. He also contributed a weekly column, "American Psyche", to The Guardian's weekend magazine between 2006 and 2008.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marilynne Robinson</span> American novelist and essayist (born 1943)

Marilynne Summers Robinson is an American novelist and essayist. Across her writing career, Robinson has received numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005, National Humanities Medal in 2012, and the 2016 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. In 2016, Robinson was named in Time magazine's list of 100 most influential people. Robinson began teaching at the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1991 and retired in the spring of 2016.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ben Lerner</span> American writer

Benjamin S. Lerner is an American poet, novelist, essayist, and critic. The recipient of fellowships from the Fulbright, Guggenheim, and MacArthur Foundations, Lerner has been a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry, the National Book Critics Circle Award in fiction, and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, among many other honors. Lerner teaches at Brooklyn College, where he was named a Distinguished Professor of English in 2016.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Madeleine Thien</span> Canadian short story writer and novelist

Madeleine Thien is a Canadian short story writer and novelist. The Oxford Handbook of Canadian Literature has considered her work as reflecting the increasingly trans-cultural nature of Canadian literature, exploring art, expression and politics inside Cambodia and China, as well as within diasporic East Asian communities. Thien's critically acclaimed novel, Do Not Say We Have Nothing, won the 2016 Governor General's Award for English-language fiction, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards for Fiction. It was shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize, the 2017 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, and the 2017 Rathbones Folio Prize. Her books have been translated into more than 25 languages.

Rachel Cusk FRSL is a Canadian novelist and writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amity Shlaes</span> American writer

Amity Ruth Shlaes is an American conservative author, writer, and columnist. Shlaes has written five books, including three New York Times Bestsellers. She currently chairs the board of trustees of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation and serves as a Presidential Scholar at The King's College in New York City. She is a recipient of the Bastiat Prize and, more recently, the Bradley Prize.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rachel Kushner</span> American writer (born 1968)

Rachel Kushner is an American writer, known for her novels Telex from Cuba (2008), The Flamethrowers (2013), The Mars Room (2018), and Creation Lake (2024).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Samantha Harvey (author)</span> English writer (born 1975)

Samantha Harvey is an English novelist. She won the 2024 Booker Prize for her novel Orbital.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kathryn Schulz</span> American journalist and author

Kathryn Schulz is an American journalist and author. She is a staff writer at The New Yorker. In 2016, she won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for her article on the risk of a major earthquake and tsunami in the Pacific Northwest. In 2023, she won the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir or Biography.

TheWriters' Prize, previously known as the Rathbones Folio Prize, the Folio Prize and The Literature Prize, is a literary award that was sponsored by the London-based publisher The Folio Society for its first two years, 2014–2015. Starting in 2017, the sponsor was Rathbone Investment Management. At the 2023 award ceremony, it was announced that the prize was looking for new sponsorship as Rathbones would be ending their support. In November 2023, having failed to secure a replacement sponsor, the award's governing body announced its rebrand as The Writers' Prize.

<i>We Need New Names</i> 2013 novel by NoViolet Bulawayo

We Need New Names is the 2013 debut novel of expatriate Zimbabwean writer NoViolet Bulawayo. A coming-of-age story, We Need New Names tells of the life of a young girl named Darling, first as a 10-year-old in Zimbabwe, navigating a world of chaos and degradation with her friends, and later as a teenager in the Midwestern United States, where a better future seems about to unfold when she goes to join an aunt working there.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eimear McBride</span> Irish novelist

Eimear McBride is an Irish novelist, whose debut novel, A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing, won the inaugural Goldsmiths Prize in 2013 and the 2014 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Claire Vaye Watkins</span> American author and academic (born 1984)

Claire Vaye Watkins is an American author and academic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Diana Evans</span> British novelist, journalist and critic (born 1972)

Diana Omo Evans FRSL is a British novelist, journalist and critic who was born and lives in London. Evans has written four full-length novels. Her first novel, 26a, published in 2005, won the Orange Award for New Writers, the Betty Trask Award and the deciBel Writer of the Year award. Her third novel Ordinary People was shortlisted for the 2019 Women's Prize for Fiction and won the 2019 South Bank Sky Arts Award for Literature. A House for Alice was published in 2023.

<i>All My Puny Sorrows</i> 2014 novel

All My Puny Sorrows is the sixth novel by Canadian writer Miriam Toews. The novel won the 2014 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2014 Scotiabank Giller Prize, the 2015 Folio Prize for Literature, and the 2015 Wellcome Book Prize. Toews has said that the novel draws heavily on the events leading up to the 2010 suicide of her sister, Marjorie.

<i>How to Be Both</i> 2014 novel by Ali Smith

How to Be Both is a 2014 novel by Scottish author Ali Smith, first published by Hamish Hamilton. It was shortlisted for the 2014 Man Booker Prize and the 2015 Folio Prize. It won the 2014 Goldsmiths Prize, the Novel Award in the 2014 Costa Book Awards and the 2015 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jennifer duBois</span> American novelist

Jennifer duBois is an American novelist. duBois is a recipient of a Whiting Award and has been named a "5 Under 35" honoree by the National Book Foundation.

Novuyo Rosa Tshuma is a Zimbabwe-born writer and professor of creative writing. She is the author of Shadows, a novella, and House of Stone, a novel.

<i>Outline</i> (novel) Novel by Rachel Cusk

Outline is a novel by Rachel Cusk, the first in a trilogy known as The Outline trilogy, which also contains the novels Transit and Kudos. It was chosen by The New York Times critics as one of the 15 remarkable books by women that are "shaping the way we read and write fiction in the 21st century." The New Yorker has called the novel "autobiographical fiction."

References

  1. ↑ "Amity Gaige | English". english.yale.edu. Retrieved 2023-11-17.
  2. ↑ "Amity Gaige | English". english.yale.edu. Retrieved 2018-02-02.
  3. ↑ "O My Darling". Other Press. Archived from the original on 2013-09-23. Retrieved 2013-08-25.
  4. ↑ "National Book Foundation's 5 Under 35 Fiction Selections for 2006". Nationalbook.org. 2006-11-13. Retrieved 2013-08-25.
  5. ↑ "The Folded World". Other Press. Archived from the original on 2013-09-23. Retrieved 2013-08-25.
  6. ↑ "2007 Winners — Book of the Year Awards". Botya.forewordreviews.com. Retrieved 2013-08-25.
  7. ↑ "for Monday, September 10, 2007". Shelf Awareness. 2007-09-10. Retrieved 2013-08-25.
  8. ↑ WorldCat book listing
  9. ↑ "Book review: "Schroder by Amity Gaige - Books". The Boston Globe. 2013-02-14. Retrieved 2013-08-25.
  10. ↑ Wernecke, Ellen (2013-04-01). "Amity Gaige: Schroder | Books". The A.V. Club. Retrieved 2013-08-25.
  11. ↑ Brown, Janelle (2013-02-21). "A real impostor's tale inspires fascinating fiction in 'Schroder' - Los Angeles Times". Articles.latimes.com. Retrieved 2013-08-25.
  12. ↑ Schulz, Kathryn (2013-02-18). "Kathryn Schulz on Amity Gaige's Novel Schroder". Vulture. Retrieved 2013-08-25.
  13. ↑ Williams, John (2013-02-06). "Desperate Dad: Amity Gaige Talks About 'Schroder'". The New York Times.
  14. ↑ "Schroder – Amity Gaige ‹ De Leesfabriek". Deleesfabriek.nl. 2013-03-07. Retrieved 2013-08-25.
  15. ↑ "Schroder". Amity Gaige. Archived from the original on 2013-07-27. Retrieved 2013-08-25.
  16. ↑ Charles, Ron (2013-02-05). "Amity Gaige's 'Schroder,' reviewed by Ron Charles - Washington Post". Articles.washingtonpost.com. Archived from the original on 2013-02-11. Retrieved 2013-08-25.
  17. ↑ Maslin, Janet (2013-02-11). "'Schroder,' a Novel by Amity Gaige". The New York Times.
  18. ↑ Dee, Jonathan (2013-03-01). "'Schroder,' by Amity Gaige". The New York Times.
  19. ↑ Ciuraru, Carmela (2013-02-15). "Schroder: A Novel by Amity Gaige: Book Review - USATODAY.com". Books.usatoday.com. Retrieved 2013-08-25.
  20. ↑ Natalie Bakopoulos (2013-03-01). "'Schroder,' by Amity Gaige". SFGate. Retrieved 2013-08-25.
  21. ↑ Losowsky, Andrew (2013-02-19). "'Schroder A Novel' By Amity Gaige: The Book We're Talking About". Huffingtonpost.com. Retrieved 2013-08-25.
  22. ↑ Trussoni, Danielle. "Picks and Pans Main: Books". People.com. Retrieved 2013-08-25.
  23. ↑ Gaige, Amity 1972-, WorldCat identities
  24. ↑ "Sea Wife by Amity Gaige: 9780525566922 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books".
  25. ↑ Egan, Elisabeth (30 April 2020). "This Book Will Take You to Beautiful Places with Palm Trees". The New York Times.
  26. ↑ "A Process Not Without Casualty: Amity Gaige in Conversation with Susan Choi". 7 May 2020.
  27. ↑ "The 2014 Folio Prize Shortlist is Announced". Folio Prize. 10 February 2014. Retrieved February 13, 2014.
  28. ↑ Gaby Wood (10 February 2014). "Folio Prize 2013: The Americans are coming, but not the ones we were expecting". The Daily Telegraph . London. Archived from the original on 11 February 2014. Retrieved February 13, 2014.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.