Pulitzer Prize Winner Jennifer Egan Is Artist-in-Residence at Penn

Author Jennifer Egan, C’85, is Artist-in-Residence in the Department of English for the 2018-19 year. The Pulitzer Prize winner will work with students and faculty, as well as share her work through public events.

“The Artist-in-Residence program brings outstanding visual artists, actors, musicians, writers, and other creative practitioners to Penn to act as mentors and collaborators,” says Steven J. Fluharty, Dean of Penn Arts and Sciences and Thomas S. Gates, Jr. Professor of Psychology, Pharmacology, and Neuroscience. “I’m delighted to have Jennifer back on campus to share her extraordinary work with our community.”

Egan is the author of The Invisible Circus, which became a feature film; Look at Me, a finalist for the National Book Award in fiction in 2001; Emerald City and Other Stories; and the bestselling The Keep. Her novel A Visit From the Goon Squad won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Harpers, Granta, McSweeney’s, and other magazines.

She is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, and a Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library. Her non-fiction articles appear frequently in the New York Times Magazine. Her 2002 cover story on homeless children received the Carroll Kowal Journalism Award, and “The Bipolar Kid” received a 2009 NAMI Outstanding Media Award for Science and Health Reporting from the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Her most recent novel, Manhattan Beach, has been awarded the 2018 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.

Activities involving Egan will include a Reading and Conversation with Jennifer Egan on October 1, co-sponsored by the Department of English and Kelly Writers House. Egan will also participate in Penn’s Winter Reading Project for students, faculty, staff, and alumni.

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