Sigrid Nunez reading Nov. 7 concludes fall 2024 Zalaznick series

A reading by writer Sigrid Nunez will conclude the Fall 2024 Barbara & David Zalaznick Reading Series on Nov. 7, at 5 p.m. in Rhodes-Rawling Auditorium, Klarman Hall KG70. Books by the authors will be available for purchase through Buffalo Street Books; a book signing and reception will follow the reading.

“Sigrid Nunez’s novels meditate on life and the world with unfussy clarity and lightness,” said Valzhyna Mort, associate professor of literatures in English and director of the Creative Writing Program in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S). “Deceptively non-fictional in the way she writes about loss, aging, and the life we share with animals, Nunez builds the world of her novels from her capacious and anxious imagination. Nunez came to literature as a complete outsider but found herself at its very center, and today she is one of the most profound living American writers. Her visit to Cornell is a dream come true for me.”


Nunez has published nine novels, including “A Feather on the Breath of God,” “The Last of Her Kind,” “What Are You Going Through,” and, most recently, “The Vulnerables.” Nunez is also the author of “Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag.” Her book “The Friend,” a New York Times bestseller, won the 2018 National Book Award and was a finalist for the 2019 Simpson/Joyce Carol Oates Prize.

Nunez’s other honors include a Whiting Writer’s Award, a Berlin Prize Fellowship, the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award, the Rome Prize in Literature and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her story “The Plan” was selected for The Best American Short Stories 2019. Her essay “Life and Story,” originally published in The Sewanee Review, was selected for The Best American Essays 2023.

She has contributed to The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, The Paris Review, The New York Review of Books, Threepenny Review, Harper’s, London Review of Books, among others. Her work has appeared in several anthologies, including four Pushcart Prize volumes and four anthologies of Asian-American literature. Her work has been published in more than thirty countries.

Nunez has taught at Columbia, Princeton, and the New School, and has been a visiting writer or writer in residence at Boston University, Amherst, Smith, Baruch, Vassar, Syracuse and the University of California, Irvine, among others. She lives in New York City.

The Zalaznick Reading Series is hosted by the Department of Literatures in English and the Creative Writing Program (A&S). More information about the event is available on the University Events Calendar.