News
March 26, 2008
Sigrid Nunez
will be Visiting Writer at the Vermont Studio Center from June 11, 2009
to June 17, 2009.
http://www.vermontstudiocenter.org/
January 13, 2008
Click
here to read a new article by Sigrid Nunez published in The New
York Times
September 1, 2007
A long interview with Sigrid Nunez by editor Lauren Mosko appears in the 2008 Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market (Writer’s Digest Books).
April 27, 2007
“The Poor Girl,” a story by Sigrid Nunez published in the latest issue of McSweeney’s, also appears in the Readings section of the May issue of Harper’s Magazine.
Sigrid Nunez
has been appointed Visiting Professor for the Winter Quarter 2008 at the
University of California, Irvine, where she will teach a Graduate Workshop
in Fiction.
March 29, 2007
Check
out "The Morning News" -- Sigrid Nunez in conversation with
Robert
Birnbaum: http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/birnbaum_v/sigrid_nunez.php
March 10, 2007
An article by Sigrid Nunez (“The Plane Began to Pitch”) appears in a special feature of the April issue of O, The Oprah Magazine.
March 8, 2007
Sigrid Nunez has been appointed the Fall 2007 Sidney Harman Writer-in-Residence at Baruch College.
March 5, 2007
Mitz: The Marmoset of Bloomsbury, Sigrid Nunez’s third book, has just been published in a new paperback edition by Soft Skull Press. Mitz is a mock biography of Leonard and Virginia Woolf’s pet monkey. Go to Mitz page
“The Poor Girl,” a story by Sigrid Nunez, appears in McSweeney's: Issue 22. Nunez was among several writers invited to write a story based on various ideas written down by F. Scott Fitzgerald but never used by him. The Fitzgerald premise for Nunez’s story was: “Girl marries a dissipated man and keeps him in healthy seclusion. She meanwhile grows restless and raises hell on the side.”
February 7, 2007
To listen
to a new podcast of Sigrid Nunez reading from The Last of Her Kind
for KQED's series The Writers' Block, click
here.
January 20, 2007
Click here to read a new interview with Sigrid Nunez by Jessica deCourcy Hinds.
January 10, 2007
Sara Nelson, editor in chief of Publishers Weekly, picks The Last of Her Kind as her favorite book of 2006. Nelson describes Nunez’s novel as “a near-perfect depiction of what it was like to be young, smart and female in a pivotal time in U.S. history. It’s the first novel in a long time that I wanted to hide under my desk at work, the better to sneak in a few chapters between meetings.” Best Books of 2006, The Globe and Mail
January 5, 2007
Read Varley
O’ Connor’s interview with Sigrid Nunez in the February 2007
issue of The Writer’s Chronicle of the Associated
Writing Programs (AWP).
January 1, 2007
Newsday’s List of Best Books of 2006 names The Last of Her Kind.
“The
Way We Looked Then,” a new essay by Sigrid Nunez, can be read online
at:
http://www.powells.com/fromtheauthor/nunez.html?&PID=11
Nunez also has an essay in The Show I'll Never Forget: 50 Writers Relive Their Most Memorable Concert-going Experience, a new anthology edited by Sean Manning (Da Capo Press).
The
Village Voice has included The Last of Her Kind on their
list of Our 25 Favorite Books of 2006.
December 18, 2006
The Last
of Her Kind has been named one of the Best Books of 2006 by The
San Francisco Chronicle.
December 12, 2006
The paperback
edition of The Last of Her Kind has just been released by Picador.
The Last of Her Kind has been named one of the Best Books of 2006
by The Christian Science Monitor.
A short essay
by Sigrid Nunez appears in the current issue (Winter 2007) of The
Threepenny Review, as part of a symposium on Berlin.
November 20, 2006
Click here
to read a new online interview with Sigrid Nunez: http://novelistic.typepad.com/novelistic/
November 5, 2006
“Sontag
Laughs,” an essay by Sigrid Nunez, has just been published in the
fall issue of Salmagundi.
http://www.skidmore.edu/salmagundi/
September 12, 2006
This year,
for its annual Alumna Book Read, Barnard College purchased a copy of The
Last of Her Kind for every new student, faculty, and staff member.
Books were mailed to students in July, and on September 1, as part of
the New Student Orientation Program, Nunez read from the novel and took
questions from members of the Class of 2010.
June 1, 2006
Sigrid Nunez is a 2006 fellow in Fiction from the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA).
“Silly
Old Hen,” a short story first published in The Berlin Journal,
appears in the spring issue of the journal Literary Imagination.
April 24, 2006
Read Nunez’s piece on the Empire State Building in this week’s Sunday New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/23/nyregion/thecity/23voic.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
A review essay by Claire Messud of The Last of Her Kind appears in the current issue of The New York Review of Books:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=18975
“Nunez’s novel performs so well, with such unobtrusive mastery, that when the true scope of its accomplishment begins to make itself known it is quietly astonishing.” Baltimore City Paper
Read a conversation between Sigrid Nunez and T Cooper:
http://www.believermag.com/exclusives/?read=interview_cooper
April 4, 2006
Read
a profile of Sigrid Nunez by Deborah Emin in the April issue of
NYCPlus:
http://www.nycplus.com/nyc12/whenthepagebecomesastage.html
March 16, 2006
An interview with Sigrid Nunez by Alexi Zentner appears in the current issue of Speakeasy Magazine.
More praise for The Last of Her Kind:
“[A]
wonderful panoramic of the landscape of the times. Nunez does such a good
job of decoding and explaining the ’70s that this book should be
taught in high-school classrooms.” Brooklyn Rail
March 6, 2006
Read Sigrid Nunez’s review article on Ali Smith’s The Accidental in the spring issue of Threepenny Review.
“In previous works, Nunez has proved herself a master of psychological acuity. Here her ambitions are grander, and the result is a remarkable and disconcerting vision of a troubled time in American history, and of its repercussions for national and individual identity.” The New Yorker
Read
“Sigrid Nunez’s Backstory,” on what sparked her to write
The Last of Her Kind:
February 21, 2006
From “A Reading Life” (The Boston Globe), by Caroline Leavitt:
“Full of passion and fire, Nunez’s novel is more about class and privilege than revolution, and it’s full of breathtaking literary acrobatics. She effortlessly zips in and out of her characters’ lives, and at one point brilliantly narrates a whole chapter from the point of view of a prison inmate.”
“Decades from now historians would do well to consult this book to get a true sense of how the upheavals of the late 1960s reverberated through the lives of young Americans, from one who experienced this social earthquake firsthand.” Baltimore Sun
“Nunez does a fine job of characterizing young people, then, now, and probably forever…. Since good fiction, to quote John Updike, furnishes ‘dramatized tensions, not settled conclusions,’ this vivid novel’s quest yields only the impassioned record of two complexly lived lives, which is satisfying enough.” Chicago Tribune
“[E]xcellent….
Nunez is as unstinting in her detailed rendering of the idealistic ’60s
and their dark afermath as she is of the worsening conditions in America’s
prisons.” Christian Science Monitor
February 8, 2006
The Last of Her Kind made the Editors’ Choice List of The New York Times Book Review
Andrew O’Hehir writes in Salon.com:
“Nunez’s piercing intelligence and post-feminist consciousness may well feel that writing the Great American novel is no longer a feasible or worthwhile goal—but damned if she hasn’t gone and done it anyway…. [The book] blossoms into a powerful and acute social novel, perhaps the finest yet written about that peculiar generation of young Americans who believed their destiny was to shape history…. This book is of course fiction, but it has more truth in it, more compassion, and more revelation, than all the confessional memoirs spewed up by all the self-aggrandizing idiots of the last decade. Don’t miss it.”
Nunez will read from The Last of Her Kind and takes questions on:
Thursday,
February 16
at 7:00 pm
BARNES & NOBLE
4 Astor Place
NYC
An article on “Books That Made a Difference to Sigrid Nunez” appears in the March issue of O, The Oprah Magazine.
February 6, 2006
More praise for The Last of Her Kind:
“[A] carefully written and discerning narrative with closely drawn portraits of two prototypical yet unique women trying to construct a friendship across an unbridgeable class divide…. [T]he historical events, both real and invented … give Nunez’s story tragic dimensions…. Nunez’s keen powers of observation make her a natural chronicler.” New York Times Book Review
The Last of Her Kind made the Editors’ Choice List of The San Francisco Chronicle.
“A
complex, well-told tale.” People
January 29, 2006
More praise for The Last of Her Kind:
“Every so often you close a book and the only word that comes to mind is ‘wow.’ This … is such a work…. Rich in historical detail, this unpredictable novel zeroes in on what it means to renounce class privilege and sacrifice oneself in the service of human betterment. Stunningly powerful.” Library Journal
“[S]uch questions as what it means to be American, whether hate and rage are useful tools and whether we can correct mistakes of previous generations engage us throughout.” Los Angeles Times
“Nunez
is refreshingly critical of her characters, never overly harsh, exposing
both the dark side and romanticism of the era.” 4 Stars.
New York Post
January 22, 2006
More praise for The Last of Her Kind:
“[R]emarkable
… we know immediately we are in the hands of a major talent able
to open up a complex history for us…. [Nunez’s] gift is wild
and large.” San Francisco Chronicle
January 17, 2006
More praise for The Last of Her Kind:
“The Last of Her Kind is full of incident and high drama … it is, above all, about the way women communicate and interpret their experience, bearing down on every nuance, irony, anguished interchange and heartbreaking loss…. [A]n unflinching examination of justice, race and political idealism that brings to mind Philip Roth’s “American Pastoral” and the tenacious intelligence of Nadine Gordimer.” The New York Times
“In this riveting novel, Nunez captures the very heart of the tuned-in and turned-on generation, baring both the idealism and polarization that accompanied its political turmoil…. [A] mesmerizing story of breathtaking sweep and intricate detail, without sentimentality, full of the patterns, leitmotifs and turning points of a generation.” Ms. Magazine
January 11, 2006
From reviews of The Last of Her Kind:
“[A] brilliant, dazzling, daring novel. Nunez has taken the old American Dream and stood it on its head…. This novel will make you rethink “Gatsby” and its reputation as the great masterpiece of American literature—no small feat.” Boston Globe
“In Sigrid Nunez’s idiosyncratic, provocative and sublimely confident new novel ... history and fiction are intermingled in a fable it would be unwise to ignore. In this precise meditation on race, class, drugs, the haunting power of friends and family members, and the hazards of loyalty and privilege, Nunez takes apart the story of a kind of life in the 1960s like a still-live mine.” Newsday
“[D]enser than Nunez’s previous books, but no less intimate in its approach to memory and the past…. Nunez’s crusading heroine feels entirely plausible, both a real, singular person and a product of her times…. But it’s the lovingly etched details that make this novel hum.” The Village Voice
“There is much to admire … incisive analysis about class, race and the prison system, authoritative writing about the late ’60s cultural landscape and lots of recognizable cultural markers of the time.” Kansas City Star
“Nunez is adept at capturing subtle frictions in the interactions between class, race and gender… [She] writes with sophisticated insight.” Seattle Times
“[Nunez’s]
compelling characterizations and subtle touch with period detail make
this an engrossing and believable story. [Her] writing is rich and subtly
textured.” Minneapolis Star Tribune
January 3, 2006
Sigrid Nunez’s fifth novel, The Last of Her Kind (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), and a new edition of her first novel, A Feather on the Breath of God (Picador), have just been released.
A profile of Sigrid Nunez by Emily Bobrow appears in the January 5-11 issue of Time Out New York.
Merle Rubin on The Last of Her Kind:
“The narrative style is … clear and affecting … capturing the viewpoints and inflections of various characters without losing its compelling intensity. What is most striking … is [the novel’s] strongly imagined portrait of the 1960s….. [Nunez] takes us beneath the surface to the essential mysteries of the human heart.” The Wall Street Journal
To
listen to a podcast of Sigrid Nunez reading from The Last of Her Kind,
click here.
December 15, 2005
A profile of Sigrid Nunez by Renee H. Shea appears in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
A new edition of Sigrid Nunez’s third book, Mitz: The Marmoset of Bloomsbury, will be published by Soft Skull Press in spring, 2007.
Another starred review for The Last of Her Kind:
“Nunez
moves far past the obvious clichés about activism to show a character
who, while not always completely sympathetic, is nonetheless multifaceted
and three-dimensional....
[T]his engrossing, beautiful novel will enthrall readers.” Booklist
(1/2006)
“A passionate honesty grips the heart of The Last of Her Kind,
[a] subtle and profoundly moving novel about friendship, romantic idealism,
and shame.” O, The Oprah Magazine
“… a touching, well-written story about ’60s idealism that challenges the current slickness in ads that sell Woodstock and such to baby boomers.” BUST
“[A]n honors-level survey course in the sexual, political, and cultural movements that shaped the thinking (and rocked the world) of so many boomer women. Nunez’s voice is unflinching and intimate, her novelistic structure as invitingly informal as jottings in a journal…” Editor's Choice, Entertainment Weekly
November 7, 2005
More advance praise for The Last of Her Kind:
“A friendship between two women, forged during the tumult of 1968, is tested, torn, and reaffirmed over the course of their very different lives…. A masterful construction of the troubled conscience of the era and its aftermath.” Kirkus Reviews (11/01/05)
October 11, 2005
The Last of Her Kind (FSG/Jan 2006) has been chosen as a forthcoming Alternate Selection of the Book of the Month Club and the Quality Paperback Book Club.
A starred review from Publishers Weekly for The Last of Her Kind:
"When Georgette George and Ann Drayton meet in 1968 as freshmen roommates at Barnard College, Georgette marvels that her privileged, brilliant roommate envies Georgette’s rough, impoverished childhood. Through the vehicle of this fascinating friendship, Nunez’s sophisticated new novel (after For Rouenna) explores the dark side of the countercultural idealism that swept the country in the 1960s. Hyperbolic even for the times, Ann’s passionate commitment to her beliefs—unwavering despite the resentment from those she tries to help—haunts Georgette, the novel’s narrator, long after the women’s lives diverge. In 1976, Ann lands in prison for shooting and killing a policeman in a misguided attempt to rescue her activist black boyfriend from a confrontation. The novel’s generous structure also gracefully encompasses the story of Georgette’s more conventional adult life in New York (she becomes a magazine editor, marries, and bears two children), plus that of Georgette’s runaway junkie sister. Nunez reveals Ann’s life in prison via a moving essay by one of her fellow inmates. By the end of this novel—propelled by rich, almost scholarly prose—all the parts come together to capture the violent idealism of the times while illuminating a moving truth about human nature." (10/10/05)
Sigrid Nunez will be returning to the faculty of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in August 2006.