Nathan Englander

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Nathan Englander
Nathan Englander 2017.jpg
Englander at the 2017 Texas Book Festival
Born1970 (age 53–54)
West Hempstead, New York, U.S.
Education Binghamton University (BA)
University of Iowa (MFA)
Genreshort story, novel
Website
nathanenglander.com

Nathan Englander (born 1970) is an American short story writer and novelist. His debut short story collection, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, was published by Alfred A. Knopf, in 1999. His second collection, What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank , won the 2012 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Contents

Biography

Nathan Englander was born in West Hempstead on Long Island, New York, and grew up there as part of the Orthodox Jewish community. [1] He attended the Hebrew Academy of Nassau County for high school and graduated from the State University of New York at Binghamton and the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. In the mid-1990s, he moved to Israel, where he lived for five years. [2] [3]

Englander lives in Toronto, Ontario, with his wife Rachel, and children Olivia and Sammy. [4] He formerly lived in Brooklyn, New York, and Madison, Wisconsin. He taught fiction as a part of CUNY Hunter College's Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing [5] and in the MFA program at New York University. [6]

Literary career

Since the publication of For the Relief of Unbearable Urges , Englander has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Bard Fiction Prize, and a fellowship at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. [7] Four of his short stories have appeared in editions of The Best American Short Stories : "The Gilgul of Park Avenue" appeared in the 2000 edition, with guest editor E.L. Doctorow, "How We Avenged the Blums" appeared in the 2006 edition, guest edited by Ann Patchett, "Free Fruit for Young Widows" appeared in the 2011 edition, guest edited by Geraldine Brooks, and "What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank" appeared in the 2012 edition, guest edited by Tom Perrotta. Another story in the collection, "The Twenty-Seventh Man," debuted as a play in November, 2012, [8] the subject of a radio program featuring audio of a reading by actor Michael Stuhlbarg. [9]

The Ministry of Special Cases, Englander's follow-up to his debut collection, was released on April 24, 2007. The novel is set in 1976 in Buenos Aires during Argentina's "Dirty War" and has been described as "an impeccably paced, historically accurate novel which is alternatively side-splitting and frighteningly macabre." [10] Englander has said of his novel: "... I resisted calling it a political book, in that it wasn’t my intent—that is, I had no corrupting (as I’d see it) preconceived position that I was pushing. There’s a lot of politics in my novel, because it’s central to the world of that novel." [11]

Englander's third book, What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank , a short story collection, was released on February 7, 2012. [12] The title story was featured in the December 12, 2011 issue of The New Yorker , [13] and the book won the 2012 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

In 2017, Englander was announced as juror for the 2017 Scotiabank Giller Prize. [14]

Awards and critical acclaim

Published works

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References

  1. ↑ Gussow, Mel. "Captured in Stories, The World He Left; For Author's Debut, Tales of Orthodox Jews", The New York Times , July 5, 1999. "Mr. Englander, who grew up in West Hempstead on Long Island, now lives in Jerusalem, and in that is one of the many paradoxes of his life."
  2. ↑ Pipe Dream
  3. ↑ ""Kisufim" – The International Festival of Jewish Writers and Poets". Breuerpress International (in Hungarian). Retrieved 2022-03-13.
  4. ↑ "Opinion: We the north: On finding a home in Canada".
  5. ↑ "Creative Writing MFA Visiting Writers". www.hunter.cuny.edu. Retrieved 2022-09-12.
  6. ↑ "New York University in Paris". Poets & Writers. Retrieved 2022-09-12.
  7. ↑ http://www.nypl.org/research/chss/scholars/pastfellows.html. Archived 2009-03-02 at the Wayback Machine
  8. ↑ McGibbon, Andrew C. "The Public Theater Announces 2011-12 Season - The AndyGram". theandygram.com. Retrieved 2022-03-13.
  9. ↑ "'The 27th Man'". Selected Shorts. Public Radio International. 2012-11-04. Retrieved 2012-11-04.
  10. ↑ Nolan, Val. "Darkly comic tale of family in Argentina", The Sunday Business Post , August 26, 2007. Accessed August 16, 2008.
  11. ↑ Galchen, Rivka. "Nathan Englander & Rivka Galchen". BOMB Magazine , September, 2007. Retrieved August 28, 2017.
  12. ↑ "What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank by Nathan Englander: 9780307949608 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books". PenguinRandomhouse.com. Retrieved 2022-03-13.
  13. ↑ "What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank". The New Yorker. 2011-12-05. Retrieved 2022-03-13.
  14. ↑ "Introducing the 2017 Scotiabank Giller Prize Jury". Scotiabank Giller Prize , http://www.scotiabankgillerprize.ca/introducing-the-2017-scotiabank-giller-prize-jury/ January 16, 2017.

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