HomeGroupsTalkMoreZeitgeist
Search Site
This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and (if not signed in) for advertising. By using LibraryThing you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Your use of the site and services is subject to these policies and terms.

Rebecca Makkai

Author of The Great Believers

Includes the names: rebecca makkai, Ребекка Маккаи

MembersReviewsPopularityRatingFavorited   Events   
4,647 (6,895)3785,343 (3.81)3
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 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) — biography from The Great Believers… (more)
The Best American Short Stories 2008 (Contributor) 553 copies, 7 reviews
The Best American Short Stories 2010 (Contributor) 400 copies, 6 reviews
The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2009 (Contributor) 360 copies, 9 reviews
The Best American Short Stories 2009 (Contributor) 352 copies, 10 reviews
The Best American Short Stories 2011 (Contributor) 336 copies, 7 reviews
Real Unreal: Best American Fantasy 3 (Contributor) 55 copies, 1 review
Anonymous Sex (Contributor) 52 copies, 4 reviews
The Kiss: Intimacies from Writers (Contributor) 21 copies, 1 review

Top members (books)

Member favorites

Members: ChristopherSwann, RitaDragonette, nzurisana

1980s (35) 2011 (24) 2019 (23) 21st century (33) AIDS (93) American (51) American literature (50) anthology (188) art (32) audiobook (25) Best American Series (42) books about books (32) Chicago (92) ebook (48) essays (38) family (26) fiction (693) friendship (27) historical fiction (59) kidnapping (31) Kindle (45) lgbt (32) LGBTQ (34) librarian (26) librarians (51) library (33) literary fiction (29) literature (33) non-fiction (34) novel (56) Paris (47) read (45) read in 2019 (23) road trip (39) short fiction (33) short stories (355) stories (32) to-read (596) unread (38) USA (24)
You must log in to edit Common Knowledge data.
For more help see the Common Knowledge help page.
Canonical name
Legal name
Other names
Date of birth
Date of death
Burial location
Gender
Nationality
Country (for map)
Birthplace
Place of death
Cause of death
Places of residence
Education
Occupations
Relationships
Agents
Organizations
Awards and honors
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.
Disambiguation notice

LibraryThing Early Reviewers Alum

Rebecca Makkai's book The Borrower - AUDIO EDITION was available from LibraryThing Early Reviewers.

Is this you?

Become a LibraryThing Author.

Member ratings

Average: (3.81)
0.5 2
1 29
1.5 5
2 76
2.5 28
3 307
3.5 124
4 514
4.5 125
5 320

Author pictures (3)

  

(see all 3 author pictures)

Improve this author

Combine/separate works

Author division

Rebecca Makkai is currently considered a "single author." If one or more works are by a distinct, homonymous authors, go ahead and split the author.

Includes

Rebecca Makkai is composed of 3 names. You can examine and separate out names.

Combine with…

 

About | Contact | Privacy/Terms | Help/FAQs | Blog | Store | APIs | TinyCat | Legacy Libraries | Early Reviewers | Common Knowledge | 194,685,618 books! | Top bar: Always visible