Literary Arts

Emily St. John Mandel

Town Hall Seattle—The Great Hall

November 23, 2016

Co-Presented by The Seattle Times. Sponsored by KPLU 88.5 FM, KUOW 94.9 FM, and Seattle Met.

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Event Description

Emily St. John Mandel is the author of four novels, most recently Station Eleven, which was a finalist for a National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, and the Arthur C. Clarke Award.

She was born and raised on the west coast of British Columbia, Canada, and studied contemporary dance at the School of Toronto Dance Theatre. She lived briefly in Montreal before relocating to New York.

A previous novel, The Singer’s Gun, was the 2014 winner of the Prix Mystere de la Critique in France. Her short fiction and essays have been anthologized in numerous collections, including Best American Mystery Stories 2013. She is a staff writer for The Millions. She lives in New York City with her husband.

 

Selected Works:

Novels
Station Eleven (2014) – Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and The Morning News 2015 Tournament of Books, finalist for numerous awards including the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, and long-listed for the Bailey’s Prize (formerly the Orange Prize) and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
The Lola Quartet (2012)
The Singer’s Gun (2009) – Winner of the Indie Bookseller’s Choice Award and was the #1 Indie Next Pick for May 2010
Last Night in Montreal (2009) – Finalist for Foreword Magazine’s Book of the Year, long-listed for The Morning News’ Tournament of Books and the Spinetingler Award, and Indie Next Pick for June 2009

Essays
“Susan Sontag, Essayist and So Much Else” – Humanities– (2014)
“I Await the Devil’s Friend Request: On Social Media and Mary Maclane” – The Millions-(2013)
“Susanna Moore, Cheryl Strayed, and the Place Where the Writers Work” – The Millions (2012)

Links

Emily St. John Mandel’s homepage
The Guardian: Arthur C Clarke award goes to ‘elegy for the hyper-globalised present’
Emily St. John Mandel reads from Station Eleven at 2014 NBA Finalists Reading
The Millions: Artifacts of the Present: The Millions Interviews Emily St. John Mandel
National Book Foundation: Interview With Emily St. John Mandel, 2014 National Book Award Finalist, Fiction
Humanities: Susan Sontag, Essayist and So Much Else

I’ve been thinking lately about immortality. What it means to be remembered, what I want to be remembered for, certain questions concerning memory and fame. I love watching old movies. I watch the faces of long-dead actors on the screen, and I think about how they’ll never truly die. I know that’s a cliché but it happens to be true. Not just the famous ones who everyone knows, the Clark Gables, the Ava Gardners, but the bit players, the maid carrying the tray, the butler, the cowboys in the bar, the third girl from the left in the nightclub. They’re all immortal to me. First we only want to be seen, but once we’re seen, that’s not enough anymore. After that, we want to be remembered.Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
What matters is good writing, what matters is that there are people who love books enough to press them into your hands in far-off cities. We are here for the books, but I think it’s easy to get distracted by our longing for success and forget this.Emily St. John Mandel
Mandel is an able and exuberant story­teller, and many readers will be won over by her nimble interweaving of her characters’ lives and fates.Sigrid Nunez NY Times Sunday Book Review