Department of English

• Tuesday, November 15, 2022 - 5:00pm to 7:00pm

KWH

NOVELIST JENNIFER EGAN (C'85)
Friedman Fiction Program
Hosted by Al Filreis

Tuesday, November 15 
5:00 PM: reception
6:00 PM: conversation
Kelly Writers House | 3805 Locust Walk | Arts Café

Watch live on YouTube
Register here to attend in person

We eagerly invite you to join us in welcoming novelist JENNIFER EGAN (C'85) for a conversation with Faculty Director Al Filreis on Tuesday, November 15 about Egan's latest novel, The Candy House. The new book is in some ways paired with her wildly successful Pulitzer Prize-winning work A Visit from the Goon Squad. The Candy House is a mind-bending work of speculative fiction told in interlocking narratives that explore social media’s “illusion of authenticity.” The event will begin with a lovely reception at 5:00 PM, followed by a 6:00 PM conversation.  Please register here to attend this event in person. 

Masks are welcome. Please stay home if you feel ill. Books available for purchase in cash, check or PayPal.

JENNIFER EGAN’s 2017 novel, Manhattan Beach, has been awarded the 2018 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. Egan was born in Chicago and raised in San Francisco. She is also the author of The Invisible Circus, a novel which became a feature film starring Cameron Diaz in 2001, Look at Me, a finalist for the National Book Award in fiction in 2001, Emerald City and Other Stories, The Keep, and A Visit From the Goon Squad, won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, and the LA 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. Also a journalist, she has written 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. She recently completed a term as President of PEN America.

FRIEDMAN PROGRAM FOR EMINENT FICTION WRITERS
Endowed in 2021, the Friedman Program for Eminent Fiction Writers Fund supports visits to the KWH by renowned fiction writers, who will share their stories and their expertise with members of the KWH community at public readings and events.

PRAISE FOR JENNIFER EGAN 

“Egan is a one-woman R&D department of language.” ―James Poniewozik, New York Times Book Review 

"The Candy House is an EDM concert, a prestige drama, a mind palace – and a warning.” ―Jesse Kavadlo, Pop Matters 

“Like a well-curated playlist, The Candy House uses chapter breaks to switch perspectives and tempos without killing the mood, and each sensuous little story feels like a peek through the blinds at people whose larger journeys we can only guess at.” ―Patrick Rapa, The Philadelphia Inquirer