Hanya Yanagihara

Last updated

Hanya Yanagihara
Hanya crop-4x6-300dpi.tif
Yanagihara in 2012
Born1974 (age 4950)
Los Angeles, California, USA
Occupation
  • Author
  • writer
  • journalist
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]

Contents

Early life

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]

Career

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 she published her best selling sophomore novel, 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]

Awards and honours

Works and publications

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anita Brookner</span> English novelist and art historian (1928–2016)

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.

<i>Quartet in Autumn</i> 1977 novel by Barbara Pym

Quartet in Autumn is a novel by British novelist Barbara Pym, first published in 1977. It was highly praised and shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the top literary prize in the UK. This was considered a comeback novel for Pym; she had fallen out of favour as styles changed, and her work had been rejected by publishers for 15 years. This followed her successful record as a novelist during the 1950s and early 1960s. As a novel, it represents a departure from her earlier style of light comedy, as it is the story of four office workers on the verge of retirement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zadie Smith</span> British novelist, essayist, and short-story writer (born 1975)

Zadie Smith FRSL is an English novelist, essayist, and short-story writer. Her debut novel, White Teeth (2000), immediately became a best-seller and won a number of awards. She became a tenured professor in the Creative Writing faculty of New York University in September 2010.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jenny Offill</span> American writer and editor

Jenny Offill is an American novelist and editor. Her novel Dept. of Speculation was named one of "The 10 Best Books of 2014" by The New York Times Book Review.

<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.

<i>Hotel du Lac</i> 1984 novel by Anita Brookner

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.

<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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Heather O'Neill</span> Canadian writer (b. 1973)

Heather O'Neill is a Canadian novelist, poet, short story writer, screenwriter and journalist, who published her debut novel, Lullabies for Little Criminals, in 2006. The novel was subsequently selected for the 2007 edition of Canada Reads, where it was championed by singer-songwriter John K. Samson. Lullabies won the competition. The book also won the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and was shortlisted for eight other major awards, including the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Governor General's Award and was longlisted for International Dublin Literary Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lauren Groff</span> American writer

Lauren Groff is an American novelist and short story writer. She has written five novels and two short story collections, including Fates and Furies (2015), Florida (2018), Matrix (2022), and The Vaster Wilds (2023).

Jane Harris is a British writer of fiction and screenplays. Her novels have been published in over 20 territories worldwide and translated into many different languages. Her most recent work is the novel Sugar Money which has been shortlisted for several literary prizes.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mansoura Ez-Eldin</span> Egyptian novelist and journalist

Mansoura Ez-Eldin is an Egyptian novelist and journalist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aminatta Forna</span> Scottish writer

Aminatta Forna, OBE, is a British writer of Scottish and Sierra Leonean ancestry. Her first book was a memoir, The Devil That Danced on the Water: A Daughter's Quest (2002). Since then she has written four novels: Ancestor Stones (2006), The Memory of Love (2010), The Hired Man (2013) and Happiness (2018). In 2021 she published a collection of essays, The Window Seat: Notes from a Life in Motion. (2021), which was a new genre for her.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Uzma Aslam Khan</span> Pakistani writer

Uzma Aslam Khan is a Pakistani American writer. Her five novels include Trespassing (2003), The Geometry of God (2008), Thinner Than Skin (2012) and The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali (2019).

Maria Joan Hyland is an ex-lawyer and the author of three novels: How the Light Gets In (2004), Carry Me Down (2006) and This is How (2009). Hyland is a lecturer in creative writing in the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester. Carry Me Down (2006) was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Hawthornden Prize and the Encore Prize.

<i>A Little Life</i> 2015 novel by Hanya Yanagihara

A Little Life is a 2015 novel by American writer Hanya Yanagihara. Lengthy and tackling difficult subject matter, it garnered critical acclaim and became a best seller.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pamela Erens</span> American writer

Pamela Erens is an American writer who appeared on a list compiled by the Reader's Digest of "23 Contemporary Writers You Should Have Read by Now". She has written three critically acclaimed novels for adults, a highly praised novel for middle schoolers, and the memoir/critical hybrid Middlemarch and the Imperfect Life. Her debut novel, The Understory (2007), was a fiction finalist for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize,. Erens's second novel, The Virgins (2013), received accolades from many sources including The New York Times, The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. It was a finalist for the John Gardner Fiction Book Award. Her third novel, Eleven Hours, was published in May 2016. It was named a Best Book of 2016 by The New Yorker, NPR, and Kirkus. Erens's middle grade novel, Matasha, was published in June 2021. Erens has also written essays and critical articles for publications such as The New York Times, Vogue, Elle, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Los Angeles Review of Books.

<i>The People in the Trees</i> 2013 novel by Hanya Yanagihara

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.

<i>To Paradise</i> 2022 novel by Hanya Yanagihara

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.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Max, D. T. (January 10, 2022), "Hanya Yanagihara's Audience of One", The New Yorker
  2. 1 2 3 4 Nazaryan, Alexander (March 19, 2015). "Author Hanya Yanagihara's Not-So-Little Life". Newsweek . Retrieved May 8, 2015.
  3. 1 2 "A Little Life | The Booker Prizes". thebookerprizes.com. Retrieved November 21, 2022.
  4. 1 2 "T Magazine's New Editor: From Glossies to Global Vision". The New York Times. August 21, 2017. Retrieved April 27, 2018.
  5. "Talking with Hanya Yanagihara About Her Debut Novel, The People in the Trees". Vogue . August 12, 2013. Retrieved August 23, 2016.
  6. 1 2 3 4 "Hanya Yanagihara: 'I have the right to write about whatever I want'". The Guardian. January 9, 2022. Retrieved November 21, 2022.
  7. Development, PodBean. "Episode 30 - Hanya Yanagihara: A Little Life - Part 3" . Retrieved October 13, 2018.
  8. Adams, Tim (July 26, 2015). "Hanya Yanagihara: 'I wanted everything turned up a little too high'". The Observer.
  9. Kidd, James (January 5, 2014). "Maverick in a Pacific Tempest: Hanya Yanagihara on being a first novel sensation" . The Independent . Archived from the original on May 9, 2022. Retrieved August 23, 2016.
  10. Hagan, Molly (February 2016). "Hanya Yanagihara". Current Biography . 77 (2): 91–95.
  11. 1 2 3 4 5 Brockes, Emma (April 22, 2018). "Hanya Yanagihara: influential magazine editor by day, best-selling author by night". The Guardian. Retrieved May 30, 2018.
  12. 1 2 Masad, Ilana (August 5, 2015). "'I Wouldn'tve Had a Biography at All': The Millions Interviews Hanya Yanagihara". The Millions. Retrieved May 31, 2018.
  13. Sacks, Sam (March 6, 2015). "Fiction Chronicle: Jude, the Obscure". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved July 17, 2015.
  14. Maloney, Jennifer. "How A Little Life Became a Sleeper Hit". WSJ. Retrieved December 11, 2022.
  15. "The Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2015 shortlist is revealed". The Man Booker Prize. September 15, 2015. Archived from the original on September 29, 2015. Retrieved September 20, 2015.
  16. 1 2 "A Little Life". Women's Prize for Fiction. Retrieved November 21, 2022.
  17. 1 2 "Book Reviews, Sites, Romance, Fantasy, Fiction". Kirkus Reviews. Retrieved November 21, 2022.
  18. 1 2 "A Little Life". National Book Foundation. Retrieved November 21, 2022.
  19. Maloney, Jennifer (September 3, 2015). "How A Little Life Became a Sleeper Hit". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved July 17, 2015.
  20. Singh-Kurtz, Sangeeta (April 14, 2021). "The Author of A Little Life Has a New Book". The Cut. Retrieved November 7, 2021.
  21. "To Paradise, by Hanya Yanagihara". www.panmacmillan.com. Retrieved January 12, 2022.
  22. The Canadian Press (April 11, 2017). "Dublin literary award short list announced". Metroland Media Group . Archived from the original on December 27, 2023. Retrieved December 27, 2023.