Cambridge as Inspiration: Women Authors: Past and Present: A Conversation with Gish Jen, Claire Messud, and Laura Zigman, moderated by Virgina Pye In-Person
Join award-winning authors Gish Jen, Claire Messud, Laura Zigman, and Virginia Pye in a conversation about Cambridge as an inspiration for their work.
- Date:
- Monday, November 6, 2023
- Time:
- 7:00pm - 8:30pm
- Time Zone:
- Eastern Time - US & Canada (change)
- Location:
- Lecture Hall
- Branches:
- Main Library
- Audience:
- Adult
- Categories:
- Author Event City Event Feature
Gish Jen’s stories have been included in The Best American Short Stories five times, including in The Best American Short Stories of the Century, edited by John Updike. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, she has been awarded NEA, Fulbright, Guggenheim, and Radcliffe fellowships. Her short work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, and The New York Times. Her most recent book is Thank You, Mr. Nixon (Knopf), a collection of stories spanning the fifty years since the opening of China to the West.
Claire Messud’s novels include The Emperor’s Children, a New York Times Book of the Year in 2006 and The Burning Girl, a finalist for the LA Times Book Award in Fiction. She is also the author of a book of novellas, The Hunters, and a memoir-in-essays, Kant’s Little Prussian Head & Other Reasons Why I Write. Her work has been translated into over twenty languages. Her next novel, This Strange Eventful History, will be published by W.W. Norton in May 2024.
Laura Zigman is the author of six novels, including Small World, Separation Anxiety and Animal Husbandry, which was made into the movie Someone Like You starring Hugh Jackman and Ashley Judd. She has also ghostwritten/collaborated on several works of nonfiction, including Eddie Izzard’s New York Times bestseller, Believe Me. She lives in Cambridge.
Virginia Pye is an award-winning author of novels and short stories. Her short story collection, Shelf Life of Happiness, won the 2019 Independent Publisher Gold Medal for Short Fiction, while two historical novels set in China—Dreams of the Red Phoenix and River of Dust—also received awards. Virginia’s essays have appeared in The New York Times, LitHub and The Rumpus. Her most recent novel, The Literary Undoing of Victoria Swann, was published in October 2023.
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