Biography

Sigrid Nunez is the daughter of a Chinese-Panamanian father and a German mother. She was born and raised in New York City. She received her BA from Barnard College

Barnard College

Barnard College is a private women's liberal arts college and a member of the Seven Sisters. Founded in 1889, Barnard has been affiliated with Columbia University since 1900. The campus stretches along Broadway between 116th and 120th Streets in the Morningside Heights neighborhood in the borough...

 and her MFA from Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

. After finishing school she worked for a time as an editorial assistant at The New York Review of Books

The New York Review of Books

The New York Review of Books is a fortnightly magazine with articles on literature, culture and current affairs. Published in New York City, it takes as its point of departure that the discussion of important books is itself an indispensable literary activity...

. She has taught at Amherst College

Amherst College

Amherst College is a private liberal arts college located in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Amherst is an exclusively undergraduate four-year institution and enrolled 1,744 students in the fall of 2009...

, Smith College

Smith College

Smith College is a private, independent women's liberal arts college located in Northampton, Massachusetts. It is the largest member of the Seven Sisters...

, Columbia University and the New School, and has been a visiting writer at Baruch College

Baruch College

Bernard M. Baruch College, more commonly known as Baruch College, is a constituent college of the City University of New York, located in the Flatiron district of Manhattan, New York City. With an acceptance rate of just 23%, Baruch is among the most competitive and diverse colleges in the nation...

, Washington University, and the University of California, Irvine

University of California, Irvine

The University of California, Irvine , founded in 1965, is one of the ten campuses of the University of California, located in Irvine, California, USA...

, among others. She has also been on the faculty of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference

Bread Loaf Writers' Conference

The Bread Loaf Writers' Conference is a writers' conference held every summer at the Bread Loaf Inn, near Bread Loaf Mountain, east of Middlebury, Vermont...

 and of several other writers' conferences across the United States. In fall 2011 she will teach a course in the Creative Writing Program at Boston University

Boston University

Boston University is a private research university located in Boston, Massachusetts. With more than 4,000 faculty members and more than 31,000 students, Boston University is one of the largest private universities in the United States and one of Boston's largest employers...

. Nunez lives in New York City.

Work

Nunez is the author of six novels: A Feather on the Breath of God, Naked Sleeper, Mitz: The Marmoset of Bloomsbury, For Rouenna, The Last of Her Kind, and Salvation City. She is also the author of Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag was an American author, literary theorist, feminist and political activist whose works include On Photography and Against Interpretation.-Life:...

. Her work has appeared in several anthologies, including three Pushcart Prize

Pushcart Prize

The Pushcart Prize is an American literary prize by Pushcart Press that honors the best "poetry, short fiction, essays or literary whatnot" published in the small presses over the previous year. Magazine and small book press editors are invited to nominate up to 6 works they have featured....

 volumes and four volumes of Asian American literature

Asian American literature

Although immigrants from Asia and Americans of Asian descent have been writing in the United States since the 19th century, Asian American literature as a category of writing only came into existence in the early 1970s...

. Among the journals she has contributed to are The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

, Harper's, McSweeney's

McSweeney's

McSweeney's is an American publishing house founded by editor Dave Eggers.Apart from its book list, McSweeney's is responsible for four regular publications: the quarterly literary journal,...

, The Believer

The Believer (magazine)

The Believer is a United States literary magazine that also covers other arts and general culture. Founded and designed in 2003 by the writer and publisher Dave Eggers, it is edited by Vendela Vida, Heidi Julavits and Ed Park...

, The Threepenny Review

The Threepenny Review

The Threepenny Review is an American literary magazine founded in 1980. It is published in Berkeley, California by founding editor Wendy Lesser. Maintaining a quarterly schedule , it offers fiction, memoirs, poetry, essays and criticism to a readership of 10,000...

, Tin House

Tin House

Tin House is an American literary magazine and book publisher based in Portland, Oregon and New York City. The Tin House magazine was conceived in the summer of 1998 by Portland publisher Win McCormack. He envisioned a journal that would be graphically appealing and free of the stale substance...

, and O: The Oprah Magazine.

Nunez's major preoccupations as a novelist have been language, memory, identity, class, and writing itself. She was a Berlin Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin

American Academy in Berlin

The American Academy in Berlin is a research and cultural institution in Berlin whose stated mission is to foster a greater understanding and dialogue between the people of the United States and the people of Germany.The American Academy was founded in September 1994 by a group of prominent...

 in spring, 2005. Among her other honors are a Whiting Writers' Award

Whiting Writers' Award

The Whiting Writers' Award is an American award presented annually to ten emerging writers in fiction, nonfiction, poetry and plays. The award is sponsored by the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation and has been presented since 1985. As of 2007, winners receive US $50,000.-External links:**...

 and two awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters: the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award and the Rome Prize in Literature.

External links

• "The Artist's Life: Sigrid Nunez," New York Foundation for the Arts, 2011
• "Sempre Susan," The New York Review of Books, 14 July 2011
• "Sempre Susan," The Los Angeles Times Book Review, 8 May 2011
• "Sempre Susan," The Economist, 14 April 2011
• "Salvation City," NY Times Book Review, 3 Oct 2010
• "Interview," Bookslut, Oct 2010
• "Interview," NPR, 30 Sep 2010
• "The Last of Her Kind," by Andrew O'Hehir at Salon.com 8 Feb 2006
• "The Last of Her Kind," NY Times review, 1 Jan 2006
• "Writer's Block," Wall Street Journal, 31 Dec 2005

Webpage

• http://www.sigridnunez.com/