Elif Batuman

Elif Batuman’s first novel, The Idiot (Penguin, 2017), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction. She is also the author of The Possessed (FSG, 2010), a collection of comical interconnected essays about Russian literature, which was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism. She has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2010 and holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Stanford University. In addition to her RJF Writer’s Award, Elif is a 2018 MacDowell Fellow and 2010 Whiting Writer’s Award winner. Her new novel Either/Or was published by Penguin Press in spring 2022. She received the 2024 John Guare Writers Fund Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome.