Hanya Yanagihara | |
|---|---|
 Yanagihara in 2012 | |
| Born | 1974 (age 49–50) Los Angeles, California, USA |
| Occupation |
|
| Alma mater | Smith College |
Hanya Yanagihara (born 1974) [1] is an American novelist, editor, and travel writer. She grew up in Hawaii. [2] She is best known for her bestselling novel A Little Life , which was shortlisted for the 2015 Booker Prize, and for being the editor-in-chief of T Magazine. [3] [4]
Hanya Yanagihara was born in 1974 in Los Angeles. [1] Her father, hematologist/oncologist [2] Ronald Yanagihara, is from Hawaii, and her mother was born in Seoul. [5] Yanagihara is partly of Japanese descent through her father and partly of Korean descent through her mother. [6] [7] As a child, Yanagihara moved frequently with her family, living in Hawaii, New York, Maryland, California and Texas. [8] She attended the Punahou School in Hawaii [9] before graduating from Smith College in 1995. [10]
Yanagihara has said that her father introduced her as a girl to the work of Philip Roth and to "British writers of a certain age", such as Anita Brookner, Iris Murdoch, and Barbara Pym. [11] Of Pym and Brookner, she says, "there is a suspicion of the craft that the male writers of their generation didn't have, a metaphysical reckoning of what is it actually doing for the world". [11] She has said that "the contemporary writers I admire most are Hilary Mantel, Kazuo Ishiguro, and John Banville". [12]
After college, Yanagihara moved to New York and worked for several years as a publicist. [2] She wrote and was an editor for Condé Nast Traveler . [11]
Her first novel, The People in the Trees , partly based on the real-life case of the virologist Daniel Carleton Gajdusek, was praised as one of the best novels of 2013. [1] [2]
Yanagihara's A Little Life was published on March 10, 2015, and received widespread critical acclaim. [13] [14] The book was shortlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize for fiction, [15] the 2016 Women's Prize for Fiction [6] [16] and won the 2015 Kirkus Prize for fiction. [17] Yanagihara was also selected as a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award in Fiction. [18] A Little Life defied the expectations of its editor, of Yanagihara's agent, and of the author herself, that it would not sell well. [19]
Yanagihara described writing the book at its best as "glorious as surfing; it felt like being carried aloft on something I couldn't conjure but was lucky enough to have caught, if for just a moment. At its worst, I felt I was somehow losing my ownership over the book. It felt, oddly, like being one of those people who adopt a tiger or lion when the cat's a baby and cuddly and manageable, and then watch in dismay and awe when it turns on them as an adult". [12]
In 2015, she left Condé Nast to become a deputy editor at T: The New York Times Style Magazine. She has said that after her sophomore novel became a best seller, people in the publishing industry were baffled by her decision to take a job at T. [11] Describing the publishing world as "a provincial community, more or less as snobby as the fashion industry", she said, "I'd get these underhanded comments like, 'oh, I never knew there were words [in T Magazine] worth reading'". Of working as an editor while writing fiction on the side, she says, "I've never done it any other way". [11] In 2017, she became the editor-in-chief of T. [4]
Yanagihara's third novel, To Paradise , was published on January 11, 2022, and reached number one on The New York Times Best Seller list. [20] [21]
| Year | Book | Award | Category | Result | Ref |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | A Little Life | Booker Prize | — | Shortlisted | [3] [6] |
| Kirkus Prize | Fiction | Won | [17] | ||
| National Book Award | Fiction | Shortlisted | [18] | ||
| 2016 | Women's Prize for Fiction | — | Shortlisted | [6] [16] | |
| 2017 | International Dublin Literary Award | — | Shortlisted | [22] |
Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison, known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist and editor. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed Song of Solomon (1977) brought her national attention and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1988, Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved (1987); she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.
Jane Urquhart, LL.D is a Canadian novelist and poet. She is the internationally acclaimed author of seven award-winning novels, three books of poetry and numerous short stories. As a novelist, Urquhart is well known for her evocative style which blends history with the present day. Her first novel, The Whirlpool, gained her international recognition when she became the first Canadian to win France's prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger. Her subsequent novels were even more successful. Away, published in 1993, won the Trillium Award and was a national bestseller. In 1997, her fourth novel, The Underpainter, won the Governor General's Literary Award.
Dame Beryl Margaret Bainbridge was an English writer. She was primarily known for her works of psychological fiction, often macabre tales set among the English working class. She won the Whitbread Awards prize for best novel in 1977 and 1996, and was nominated five times for the Booker Prize. She was described in 2007 as a national treasure. In 2008, The Times named Bainbridge on their list of the "50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Anita Brookner was an English novelist and art historian. She was Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Cambridge from 1967 to 1968 and was the first woman to hold this visiting professorship. She was awarded the 1984 Booker–McConnell Prize for her novel Hotel du Lac.
Lydia Millet is an American novelist. Her 2020 novel A Children's Bible was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction and named one of the ten best books of the year by the New York Times Book Review. She has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Salon wrote of Millet's work, "The writing is always flawlessly beautiful, reaching for an experience that precedes language itself."
Geraldine Brooks is an Australian-American journalist and novelist whose 2005 novel March won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Dame Hermione Lee is a British biographer, literary critic and academic. She is a former President of Wolfson College, Oxford, and a former Goldsmiths' Professor of English Literature in the University of Oxford and Professorial Fellow of New College. She is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Literature.
Hotel du Lac is a 1984 novel by English writer Anita Brookner. It centres on Edith Hope, a romance novelist who is staying in a hotel on the shores of Lake Geneva. There she meets other English visitors, including Mrs Pusey, Mrs Pusey's daughter Jennifer, and an attractive middle-aged man, Mr Neville.
Ann Patchett is an American author. She received the 2002 PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction in the same year, for her novel Bel Canto. Patchett's other novels include The Patron Saint of Liars (1992), Taft (1994), The Magician's Assistant (1997), Run (2007), State of Wonder (2011), Commonwealth (2016), The Dutch House (2019), and Tom Lake (2023). The Dutch House was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Elizabeth Grace Hay is a Canadian novelist and short story writer.
Specimen Days is a 2005 novel by American writer Michael Cunningham. It contains three stories: one that takes place in the past, one in the present, and one in the future. Each of the three stories depicts three central, semi-consistent character-types: a young boy, a man, and a woman. Walt Whitman's poetry is also a common thread in each of the three stories, and the title is from Whitman's own prose works.
Sophie Cunningham is an Australian writer and editor based in Melbourne. She is the current Chair of the Board of the Australian Society of Authors, the national peak body representing Australian authors.
Tatjana Soli is an American novelist and short-story writer. Her first novel, The Lotus Eaters (2010), won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (UK), was a finalist for the Los Angeles Book Prize, was a New York Times Bestseller, and a New York Times 2010 Notable Book. It has been optioned for a movie. Her second novel, The Forgetting Tree (2012) was a New York Times Notable Book. Soli's third novel, The Last Good Paradise, was among The Millions "Most Anticipated" Books of 2015. Her fourth novel, The Removes (2018), was named a New York Times Editor's Choice and longlisted for the Chautauqua Prize. Soli was longlisted for the Simpson/Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize honoring a mid-career writer. Her non-fiction has appeared in a variety of publications including The New York Times Book Review.
Elena Ferrante is a pseudonymous Italian novelist. Ferrante's books, originally published in Italian, have been translated into many languages. Her four-book series of Neapolitan Novels are her most widely known works. Time magazine called Ferrante one of the 100 most influential people in 2016.
Tiphanie Yanique from Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, is a Caribbean American fiction writer, poet and essayist who lives in New York. In 2010 the National Book Foundation named her a "5 Under 35" honoree. She also teaches creative writing, currently based at Emory University.
Emily St. John Mandel is a Canadian novelist and essayist. She has written six novels, including Station Eleven (2014), The Glass Hotel (2020), and Sea of Tranquility (2022). Station Eleven, which has been translated into 33 languages, has been adapted into a limited series on HBO Max. The Glass Hotel was translated into twenty languages and was selected by Barack Obama as one of his favorite books of 2020. Sea of Tranquility was published in April 2022 and debuted at number three on The New York Times Best Seller list.
A Little Life is a 2015 novel by American writer Hanya Yanagihara. Lengthy and tackling difficult subject matter, it garnered critical acclaim, was shortlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize and the National Book Awards, and became a best seller.
The People in the Trees is the 2013 debut novel of author Hanya Yanagihara. Yanagihara stated that her book was in part inspired by Daniel Carleton Gajdusek, who was revered in the scientific community before being accused of child molestation.
Michelle Good is a Cree writer, poet, and lawyer from Canada, most noted for her debut novel Five Little Indians. She is a member of the Red Pheasant Cree Nation in Saskatchewan. Good has an MFA and a law degree from the University of British Columbia and, as a lawyer, advocated for residential-school survivors.
To Paradise is a 2022 novel by American novelist Hanya Yanagihara. The book, Yanagihara's third, takes place in an alternate version of New York City, and has three sections, respectively set in 1893, 1993, and 2093. Though a bestseller, the novel received mixed reviews from critics.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| Artists | |
| People | |
| Other | |
