Rebecca Makkai
Author of The Great Believers
About the Author
Rebecca Makkai is an author, based in the Chicago area. She holds as MA from Middlebury College's Bread Loaf School of English and a BA from Washington and Lee University. She was an elementary Montessori teacher for twelve years before becoming a writer. She is on the MFA faculties of Sierra show more Nevada College and Northwestern University. And she is the Artistic Director of StoryStudio Chicago. She has had her short fiction published in such anthologies as The Pushcart Prize XLI, The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, New Stories from the Midwest, and Best American Fantasy. She has a short story collection entitled Music for Wartime. She won the 2017 Pushcart prize for short fiction. Her first novel was entitled The Borrower. Her other novels include The Hundred-Year House and The Great Believers. She won the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Medal for fiction with her novel, The Great Believers. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: © Ryan Fowler
Works by Rebecca Makkai
The Briefcase 1 copy
The Worst You Ever Feel 1 copy
No title 1 copy
Ploughshares Summer 2024 1 copy
Marii Încrezători 1 copy
Associated Works
Astoria to Zion: Twenty-Six Stories of Risk and Abandon from Ecotone's First Decade (2014) — Contributor — 13 copies, 1 review
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1978-04-20
- Gender
- female
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Skokie, Illinois, USA
- Places of residence
- Chicago, Illinois, USA
- Education
- Washington and Lee University (BA)
Middlebury College (Bread Loaf School of English) - Occupations
- teacher
- Short biography
- Rebecca Makkai (born April 20, 1978) is an American novelist and short-story writer. Her first novel, The Borrower, was released in June 2011. It was a Booklist Top Ten Debut, an Indie Next pick, an O Magazine selection, and one of Chicago Magazine's choices for best fiction of 2011. It was translated into seven languages. Her short stories have been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011 and as well as in ″The Best American Nonrequired Reading″" 2009 and 2016; she received a 2017 Pushcart Prize and a 2014 NEA fellowship. Her fiction has also appeared in Ploughshares, Tin House, The Threepenny Review, New England Review, and Shenandoah. Her nonfiction has appeared in Harpers and on Salon.com and the New Yorker website. Makkai's stories have also been featured on Public Radio International's Selected Shorts and This American Life. Her second novel, The Hundred-Year House, is set in the Northern suburbs of Chicago, and was published by Viking/Penguin in July 2014, having received starred reviews in Booklist, Publishers Weekly and Library Journal. It won the 2015 Novel of the Year award from the Chicago Writers Association and was named a best book of 2014 by BookPage. Her short story collection, Music for Wartime, was published by Viking in June 2015. A starred and featured review in Publishers Weekly said, "Though these stories alternate in time between WWII and the present day, they all are set, as described in the story “Exposition,” within “the borders of the human heart”—a terrain that their author maps uncommonly well.” The Kansas City Star wrote that "if any short story writer can be considered a rock star of the genre, it's Rebecca Makkai."
Her novel about the AIDS epidemic in 1980s Chicago, titled The Great Believers was published by Viking/Penguin Random House in June 2018. The Great Believers won the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and was a finalist for the 2018 National Book Award for Fiction. It was also a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, and won the LA Times Book Prize, the ALA Stonewall Award, and the Chicago Review of Books Award.
Members
Discussions
The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai - Jun 2011 LTER in Reviews of Early Reviewers Books (October 2011)
Reviews
I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai
My first read of the year was a doozy! A bit of true crime, dark academia, and coming to terms with your childhood. Bodie returns to a New Hampshire boarding school she attended as a teen. During her time there, her roommate was murdered, but Bodie thinks the wrong man was imprisoned. This worked so well because of the writing, which was personal and intimate because they are letters to a third person. Also, we're seeing this happen through the eyes of a 40-year-old woman, so there's a maturity and distance that most boarding school murder books don't have. There's a running piece of the book where she theorizes how different suspects would have committed the murder. The author brings in references to many different real life cases where women are murdered or assaulted and justice wasn't served. Honestly, I couldn't put this down. I loved that Bodie was so flawed and she was dealing with her own marriage and normal life issues in addition to the main plot. It felt more realistic. And feeling anger at other examples was so relevant. After being disappointed in Great Believers, I was surprised by how much I loved this one. It runs a bit long in parts and loses some momentum when the trial starts, but it's worth it.… (more)
½
from James--
Some books are linear. Some have parts that can seemingly be read in any order. I've always wanted to go back, for example, and re-read The Bluest Eye by Morrison to see if it matters which season comes first.
The Hundred-Year House shuffles through 3 major time periods in the lives of the Devohrs and the estate they've inhabited off and on for over a hundred years. At various times the house has also acted as an artist's colony which sets up the different narratives and conflicts. The telling starts in the late 1990's then goes backwards from there. It's an unraveling, I suppose, but I wonder how the pace would change if the story started in 1900 instead of ending up there.
The story is well told and rich in characters that you get to know and like. Sometimes it's hard to keep track of the lineage through the years (which is further complicated by a key plot element that I won't giveaway). I expected the house to be a more drawn character, rather than just a setting. If anything, time is more important than the location. That's a minor quibble and one that won't distract from your enjoyment of the book. If you pick it up, though, read it backwards and let me know how it goes :)… (more)
Some books are linear. Some have parts that can seemingly be read in any order. I've always wanted to go back, for example, and re-read The Bluest Eye by Morrison to see if it matters which season comes first.
The Hundred-Year House shuffles through 3 major time periods in the lives of the Devohrs and the estate they've inhabited off and on for over a hundred years. At various times the house has also acted as an artist's colony which sets up the different narratives and conflicts. The telling starts in the late 1990's then goes backwards from there. It's an unraveling, I suppose, but I wonder how the pace would change if the story started in 1900 instead of ending up there.
The story is well told and rich in characters that you get to know and like. Sometimes it's hard to keep track of the lineage through the years (which is further complicated by a key plot element that I won't giveaway). I expected the house to be a more drawn character, rather than just a setting. If anything, time is more important than the location. That's a minor quibble and one that won't distract from your enjoyment of the book. If you pick it up, though, read it backwards and let me know how it goes :)… (more)
I really enjoyed this book. It spans two timelines, telling stories that ultimately merges in Paris. At it's basic level, it's a story about motherhood (biological and chosen), but on a bigger level, it addresses the history of compassion (or lack thereof) and the failures of a culture to adequately comprehend the issues of HIV in the late 1980's. Makkai recreates a time when Aids was a death sentence. Today, it's a worrisome nuisance, but manageable.
My only knock on the book is the cover. It looks like macaroni.
Makkai creates characters you know and miss when their stories are done. Highly recommend.… (more)
My only knock on the book is the cover. It looks like macaroni.
Makkai creates characters you know and miss when their stories are done. Highly recommend.… (more)
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- Works
- 12
- Also by
- 10
- Members
- 5,937
- Popularity
- #4,157
- Rating
- 3.8
- Reviews
- 388
- ISBNs
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