NBF Presents: Fiction of the Midwest
Friday, March 18, 1:45 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. CT
From fictional Vacca Vale, Indiana, to Twin Cities-esque suburbs, the Midwest is a place of both inspiration and devastation for Jakob Guanzon and Tess Gunty’s National Book Award–honored debut novels. Join Guanzon (Abundance) and Gunty (The Rabbit Hutch) for readings and a conversation about how place, people, and class intersect in great fiction, and the resonances of heartland storytelling with readers everywhere. Moderated by Ruth Dickey, executive director of the National Book Foundation.
Panelist Bios:
Tess Gunty is the author of the National Book Award–winning novel The Rabbit Hutch. Raised in South Bend, Indiana, Gunty earned an MFA in creative writing from NYU, where she was a Lillian Vernon fellow. Her work has appeared in The Iowa Review, Joyland, Los Angeles Review of Books, No Tokens, Flash, and elsewhere. She is a writer in residence in the Creative Writing Program at NYU. She lives between Brooklyn and upstate New York. Her second novel, Honeydew, is forthcoming.
Jakob Guanzon is the author of Abundance, longlisted for both the National Book Award and the Aspen Words Literary Prize in 2021. His writing has appeared in BOMB Magazine, The New York Times, and elsewhere. He earned an MFA from Columbia University in 2017 and has since taught at the Center for Fiction, at Hamline University, and as part of the Zell Visiting Writers Series at the University of Michigan. His latest novel, Good Old Long Gone, is forthcoming.
Photo Credit: Iqra Shabaz
Ruth Dickey has spent over 30 years working at the intersection of community building, writing, and art, now as executive director of the National Book Foundation. Dickey previously had the pleasure of leading organizations in Washington, DC; New Orleans, Louisiana; Cincinnati, Ohio; and, most recently, in Seattle, Washington, as executive director of Seattle Arts & Lectures. An ardent fan of dogs and coffee, she served as a fiction judge for the 2019 National Book Awards and holds an MFA in poetry from UNC Greensboro, and a BS in foreign service and an MA in Latin American studies from Georgetown University.