Anthony Marra

Anthony Marra is an American novelist whose debut work announced him as one of the most gifted writers of his generation. Born in Washington, DC, he studied at George Washington University, the University of East Anglia, and received his MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin. A Constellation of Vital Phenomena (2013) is set during the Chechen Wars and follows interconnected characters over decades of conflict. It won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, the Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Award, and the Athens Prize for Literature. It was longlisted for the National Book Award. His second book, The Tsar of Love and Techno (2015), a collection of linked stories set in Russia and Chechnya across several decades, won the Joyce Carol Oates Prize in 2018 and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Marra has been named one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists. He has received the Whiting Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Berlin Prize, and the National Magazine Award. He teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Stanford University, where he lives in the Bay Area.