The Jenny McKean Moore Reading Series Presents: Laura van den Berg
The Jenny McKean Moore Reading Series Presents:
Laura van den Berg
Join us on Thursday, April 28th at 7:30PM in Corcoran 111 for the next installment of The Jenny McKean Moore Reading Series featuring Laura van den Berg, who will read from her new novel, Find Me.
Find Me, “a gripping, imaginative, darkly funny tale of a young woman struggling to find her place in the world,” was published by FSG last year, was selected as a “Best Book of 2015” by NPR, Time Out New York, and BuzzFeed, as well as being longlisted for the 2016 International Dylan Thomas Prize.
Her new novel is preceded by two collections of short stories, entitled What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us(a Barnes & Noble “Discover Great New Writers” selection and shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award), and The Isle of Youth, which was named a “Best Book of 2013” by NPR, The Boston Globe, and O, The Oprah Magazine; a finalist for the Frank O’Connor Award; and received The Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters and the 2015 Bard Fiction Prize.
Her stories have appeared in Conjunctions, Freeman’s, The Kenyon Review, American Short Fiction, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, One Story, and have been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Mystery Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, and the Pushcart Prize XXIV.
Her reviews and essays have appeared in venues including The New York Times Book Review, O, The Oprah Magazine, The Millions, and Vogue.com.
Van den Berg has taught Creative Writing at Gettysburg College, The Gilman School (as the 2010-2011 Tickner Fellow), Goucher College, Johns Hopkins University, Maryland Institute College of Art, The American Academy in Paris, George Washington University, Colby College, and in the M.F.A. Programs at Emerson College and Columbia University. She is the recipient of scholarships and fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conferences, Ragdale, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Omi International Arts Center, and was awarded a 2015 Jeannette Haien Ballard Writer’s Prize, a $25,000 annual prize given to “a young writer of proven excellence in poetry or prose.”
Praise for Find Me:
“Radiant prose…From this memorable novel’s eerie first paragraph to its enigmatic ending, Laura van den Berg has invented something beautiful indeed.” – Elizabeth Hand, The Los Angeles Times
“Pleasingly strange… impressively original… In van den Berg’s fiction, much is left unexplained. The bizarre and the mundane often bump up against each other, shrug and join forces… FIND ME has a funny way of resonating beyond its pages.” — Carmela Ciuraru, The New York Times Book Review
“Spellbinding…a mesmerizing and emotional experience that invites readers to, like Joy, savor life.” – Kelly Luce, O, The Oprah Magazine
