Joan Silber has authored nine books of fiction, including Secrets of Happiness (2021), Improvement (2017), winner of The National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award, The Size of the World (2008), a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Prize in Fiction, Lucky Us (2001), In the City (1987), and Household Words (1980), winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award. Her three short story collections are Fools (2013), longlisted for the National Book Award and finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, Ideas of Heaven (2004), finalist for the National Book Award and the Story Prize, and In My Other Life (2000). She has also received an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts.
Silber’s fiction has been anthologized in the O. Henry Prize Stories, The Pushcart Prize collections, and Best American Short Stories. Her work has also appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Epoch, Agni, Tin House, The Southern Review, The Colorado Review, and other publications. She teaches fiction writing at Sarah Lawrence College and in the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers.
Essential Reading:
- Interview for LitHub, “Joan Silber on Writing Double Maneuvers and Deception:” https://lithub.com/joan-silber-on-writing-double-maneuvers-and-deception/
- Publisher’s Weekly, “Family Affairs: PW Talks with Joan Silber:” https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/interviews/article/85112-family-affairs-pw-talks-with-joan-silber.html
- Excerpt from Secrets of Happiness (2021): https://lithub.com/secrets-of-happiness/
Essential Viewing:
- Joan Silber reads from Secrets of Happiness, followed by a conversation with Margot Livesy: https://youtu.be/gOnOzkz7ib8
- Joan Silber in conversation with Paul Yoon: https://fb.watch/v/1PcRWoHiX/
