Elif Batuman Reading

The Edelstein-Keller Visiting Writer Series presents Elif Batuman, author of the memoir The Possessed, as well as the novels The Idiot, which was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and Either/Or. 

This is a free event open to the public, presented by the Creative Writing Program and the Department of English. For questions about accessibility services and the venue, please email sutt0063@umn.edu or call 612-626-1528.

Batuman graduated from Harvard College and has a PhD in comparative literature from Stanford University. During graduate school she studied in Uzbekistan, and from 2010 to 2013, she was a writer-in-residence at Koç University in Istanbul. Her collection, The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them, consists of comic interconnected non-fiction essays about the pursuit of Russian literature. It was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Either/Or, the much-anticipated sequel to Batuman’s Pulitzer Prize-nominated book The Idiot, was released in 2022; the Washington Post writes, “Either/Or is a sequel that amplifies the meaning of its predecessor while expanding its philosophical ambition—in short, the best kind.” Batuman is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, and a Paris Review Terry Southern Prize for Humor. She lives in Brooklyn, where she is a staff writer for the New Yorker.