Author Bios

Verónica Moscoso is an Ecuadorian author whose fiction explores the lives of women navigating the contradictions of Latin American society—the pressures of family expectation, colonial legacy, class division, and gender—with a lyrical intensity rooted in the specific landscapes and histories of Ecuador. Born in Quito, Moscoso has built a literary reputation in the Spanish-speaking world…

Madeleine Thien is a Canadian novelist and short story writer of Malaysian-Chinese heritage whose fiction navigates the intersection of political history, personal memory, and the long reach of violence across generations. Born in 1974 in Vancouver, British Columbia, to parents who emigrated from Malaysia, Thien grew up immersed in stories of Southeast Asia—of the tumultuous…

Graeme Macrae Burnet is a Scottish author whose work has established him as one of the most interesting and formally inventive crime and literary fiction writers working in Britain today. Born in 1967 in Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, Burnet studied English literature at the University of Glasgow and later worked in various capacities—including teaching and translation work…

Lauren Groff is an American novelist and short story writer whose fiction is marked by its lyrical intensity, its interest in female interiority and constraint, and its willingness to engage with large questions of history, nature, and moral life through the intimate canvas of individual lives. Born in 1978 in Cooperstown, New York, Groff studied…

Tayari Jones is an American novelist whose fiction has consistently illuminated the interior lives of Black Americans with emotional precision and moral seriousness, exploring how race, class, family, and love intersect and collide in contemporary life. Born in 1970 in Atlanta, Georgia, Jones grew up in the historically Black Atlanta University Center neighborhood, surrounded by…

Damon Galgut is a South African novelist whose fiction has established him as one of the most important literary voices to emerge from post-apartheid South Africa, and one of the finest prose stylists working in English today. Born in 1963 in Pretoria, Galgut grew up under apartheid and has spent his adult life reckoning in…

Charles Yu is an American author and television writer whose fiction blends metafiction, genre experimentation, and deeply personal meditations on Asian American identity, family, and the strange pressure of immigrant aspiration. Born in 1976, Yu grew up in Southern California in a Taiwanese American family, and he has described his childhood and upbringing as a…

Zadie Smith is a British novelist, essayist, and critic whose work has made her one of the most celebrated and culturally influential literary figures of her generation. Born in 1975 in Brent, a borough of northwest London, to a Jamaican mother and an English father, Smith grew up in the multiracial, multicultural landscape of North…

Markus Zusak is an Australian author best known for a novel that has become one of the most beloved works of literary fiction of the twenty-first century, a book that transformed the way millions of readers think about storytelling, mortality, and the endurance of human kindness. Born in 1975 in Sydney, Australia, to German and…

R.F. Kuang is an American fantasy and literary fiction author whose work has established her, at a remarkably young age, as one of the most important and provocative voices in contemporary speculative fiction. Born in 1996 in Guangzhou, China, and raised in the United States, Kuang studied history at Georgetown University, received a master’s in…