photo credit: Clayton Cubitt
Katie Kitamura
Katie Kitamura’s most recent novel is Audition. A finalist for the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, it was one of President Obama’s Favorite Books of 2025. It was also a finalist for the Gotham Book Prize and was longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, the Women’s Prize and the Carol Shields Prize.
Her previous novel, Intimacies, was one of The New York Times’ 10 Best Books of 2021, was longlisted for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, and was one of President Obama’s Favorite Books of 2021. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Cullman Center Fellowship, the Rome Prize in Literature and the Prix Litteraire Lucien Barriere, Kitamura’s work has been translated into 29 languages and is being adapted for film. She teaches in the Creative Writing Program at New York University.
Katie Kitamura: The New Yorker interview.
Katie Kitamura: Apple podcast.
Katie Kitamura: Audition; Free Library of Philadelphia event on YouTube.
photo credit: David Manak
Erika Krouse
Erika Krouse is the author of four books of fiction and nonfiction, including her new collection of short stories, Save Me, Stranger, which was longlisted for The Story Prize. Erika is a two-time winner of the Edgar Award, and her memoir, Tell Me Everything: The Story of a Private Investigation, was also a New York Times Editors’ Choice.
Erika is also a winner of the Colorado Book Award, the Housatonic Book Award, and the Paterson Fiction Prize. Erika’s short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Esquire.com, Best Mystery Stories of the Year, The Best American Mystery and Suspense, and elsewhere. Erika mentors for the Book Project and the Portfolio Year at Lighthouse Writers Workshop, where she won the Beacon Award for Teaching Excellence.
Erika Krouse on Olivia’s Book Club Podcast.
The Library @ the Museum An Afternoon with Author Erika Krouse.
photo credit: Dennis Hearne
Lori Ostlund
Lori Ostlund is the author of Are You Happy? (Astra House, 2025), which was chosen as one of Electric Literature’s Top 5 story collections of 2025 and appeared on the Washington Post’s “50 Notable Works of Fiction from 2025.” Her novel After the Parade (Scribner, 2015) was a B&N Discover pick, a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and a NYTimes Editors’ Choice. Her first book, The Bigness of the World (UGA, 2009; Scribner, 2016), received the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, the Edmund White Debut Fiction Award, and the California Book Award for First Fiction.
Her stories have appeared in the Best American Short Stories, the PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, ZYZZYVA, and New England Review, among other places. Lori has received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Award and was a finalist for the inaugural Joyce Carol Oates Prize. She has served as the series editor of the Flannery O’Connor Award since 2022 and is on the board of the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. She lives in San Francisco with her wife, the writer Anne Raeff, and is at work on her next book, a novel entitled The Proprietresses.
Lori Ostlund with Oscar Villalon at Green Apple.
Lori Ostlund 5-minute reading at The Center for Fiction (begin at 53:30 mark).
photo credit: Stephen Alvarez
Jamie Quatro
Jamie Quatro is the New York Times Notable author of the story collection I Want to Show You More, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award and the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize; and the novel Fire Sermon, a Book of the Year for the Economist, San Francisco Chronicle, LitHub, Bloomberg, and the Times Literary Supplement. Her most recent novel, Two-Step Devil, is the winner of the 2025 Willie Morris Award for Southern Writing. Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, the novel has been named a New York Times Editor's Choice, a 2025 ALA Notable Book, and a Best Book of 2024 by the Paris Review and the Atlanta Journal Constitution. A new story collection is forthcoming from Grove Press in 2027.
Quatro’s fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Harper’s, the New York Review of Books, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. A contributing editor at Oxford American, Quatro holds an MA in English from the College of William and Mary and an MFA in fiction from the Bennington College Writing Seminars. She teaches in the Sewanee School of Letters MFA program and lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Jamie Quatro with Sloane Crosley for The Center for Fiction.
Jamie Quatro on Take On the South podcast.
Jamie Quatro at Yale Center for Faith and Culture.
photo credit: Dustin Snipes
Danzy Senna
Danzy Senna is the author of six critically acclaimed books of fiction and nonfiction. Her first novel, Caucasia, won the Book of the Month Award for First Fiction and the American Library Association’s Alex Award. The book was a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and was named a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year. Senna’s debut has been translated into twelve languages and become a modern classic.
Since publishing Caucasia, Senna has become one of today’s most widely respected voices tackling multiracial and complex social identities. Her previous books include the novel, Symptomatic, the memoir, Where Did You Sleep Last Night?A Personal History, the short story collection, You Are Free, and the novel, New People, named a Best Book of the Year for the The New York Times, Vogue, Time Magazine, and NPR.
Senna’s latest novel, Colored Television, a New York Times Notable Book of 2024, was an instant national bestseller and was praised as “brilliant…of-the-moment” (Kirkus Reviews), “the New Great American Novel” (The Los Angeles Times).
Senna, a recipient of the Whiting Writers Award and the 2016 Dos Passos Prize for Literature, has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Vogue, among other publications. She is a Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Southern California.
Danzy Senna in The New Yorker.
