Nell Freudenberger

When only twenty-five years old and having just finished an M.F.A. program in fiction writing at New York University, Nell Freudenberger had her first short story published in the New Yorker, a feat many well-seasoned writers have never accomplished. That short story, “Lucky Girls,” became the title work in her first story collection, published by Ecco/HarperCollins in 2003. Set in New Delhi and Bangkok, where she had been living and teaching the previous year, Lucky Girls won the PEN/Malamud award for short fiction and the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

The Dissident (HarperCollins, 2006), her first novel, enjoyed equal success, winning the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize from the University of Rochester and, like Lucky Girls, a place on the New York Times list of Notable Books.

Among her other honors are a Whiting Award (2005), an appointment as writer-in-residence at the Bronx Academy of Letters (2006), and residencies at the MacDowell Colony (2001, 2002) and Yaddo (2002).

During her Guggenheim Fellowship term, she will be working on her second novel, tentatively titled The Newlyweds.