February 04, 2011 1:30 pm- 2:45 pm
Lobby Level, Marriott, Marriott Ballroom
Marriott Wardman Park & Omni Shoreham Hotels
Washington, D.C.
NBCC President Jane Ciabattari hosts a featured fiction reading at the annual AWP conference in Washington, D.C., with NBCC award winners and finalists Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Edward P. Jones, Jayne Anne Phillips, Elizabeth Strout, and Colson Whitehead. Their work evokes a geographic range from Maine to Brooklyn, Virginia and West Virginia.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born in Nigeria and is the author of the novels Purple Hibiscus (2003) and Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), which was a National Book Critics Circle finalists in fiction, and the story collection The Thing around Your Neck (2009). She also has the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction (2007) and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (2008).
Edward P. Jones is author of The Known World (National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction, Pulitzer in Fiction) and the short story collections Lost in the City (PEN/Hemingway award) and All Aunt Hagar's Children. He also is a recipient of a MacArthur “genius” grant and the PEN/Malamud award. He lives in Washington, D.C.
Jayne Anne Phillips is author of two National Book Critics Circle fiction finalists, Machine Dreams and Lark and Termite. Her story collection Black Tickets won the Sue Kaufman prize for first fiction. She directs the MFA program at Rutgers-Newark.
Elizabeth Strout is the author of Olive Kitteridge, a novel in stories, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction, and two previous novels, Abide with Me and Amy and Isabelle.
Colson Whitehead's four novels include The Intuitionist, Sag Harbor, and John Henry Days, a finalist for the 2001 National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Fiction Award, and the Pulitzer Prize, and winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. He is recipient of Whiting and MacArthur awards.