George Saunders is the author of four collections of short stories: the bestselling Pastoralia, set against a warped, hilarious, and terrifyingly recognizable American landscape; CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, a Finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award; In Persuasion Nation, one of three finalists for the 2006 STORY Prize for best short story collection of the year; and The Tenth of December, released in 2013, described as his most honest, accessible and moving collection yet. Pastoralia and CivilWarLand in Bad Decline were both New York Times Notable Books. The Tenth of December has been described as “the best book you’ll read this year” by The New York Times Magazine.
Saunders is also the author of the novella-length illustrated fable, The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil, which takes us into a profoundly strange country called Inner Horner, and the New York Times bestselling children’s book, The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip, illustrated by Lane Smith, which has also won major children’s literature prizes in Italy and the Netherlands. The Boston Globe lauds Saunders’ ability to “construct a story of absurdist satire, then locate within it a moment of searing humanity.”
Saunders’ book of essays, The Braindead Megaphone (2007), received critical acclaim and landed him spots on The Charlie Rose Show, Late Night with David Letterman, and The Colbert Report. Vanity Fair wrote of the book, “Saunders’s bitingly clever and compassionate essays are a Mark Twain-syle shot in the arm for Americans, an antidote to the dumbing down virus plaguing our country. Well, we live in hope.” His work appears regularly in The New Yorker, GQ, and Harpers Magazine, and has appeared in the O’Henry, Best American Short Story, Best Non-Required Reading, and Best American Travel Writing anthologies.
In 2001, Saunders was selected by Entertainment Weekly as one of the 100 top most creative people in entertainment, and by The New Yorker in 2002 as one of the best writers 40 and under. In 2006, he was awarded both a MacArthur Fellowship, for “bring[ing] to contemporary American fiction a sense of humor, pathos, and literary style all his own,” and a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2013 TIME Magazine listed Saunders on its list of 100 Most Influential People in the World. He teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Syracuse University.
Selected Works
Tenth of December: Stories (2013)
In Persuasion Nation (2006)
The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil (2005)
The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip (2000) (novella with illustrations by Lane Smith)
Pastoralia (2000)
CivilWarLand in Bad Decline (1996)
Links
New York Times Magazine: George Saunders Has Written the Best Book You’ll Read This Year
NPR: From George Saunders, A Dark ‘December’
