George Saunders

Early life and education Saunders was born in Amarillo, Texas. He grew up in Oak Forest, Illinois, near Chicago, attended St. Damian Catholic School and graduated from Oak Forest High School in Oak Forest, Illinois. He spent some of his early twenties working as a roofer in Chicago, a doorman in Beverly Hills, and a slaughterhouse knuckle-puller. In 1981, he received a B.S. in geophysical engineering from Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado. Of his scientific background, Saunders has said, "any claim I might make to originality in my fiction is really just the result of this odd background: basically, just me working inefficiently, with flawed tools, in a mode I don't have sufficient background to really understand. Like if you put a welder to designing dresses."

In 1988, he was awarded an M.F.A. in creative writing from Syracuse University, where he worked with Tobias Wolff. At Syracuse, he met Paula Redick, a fellow writer, whom he married. Saunders recalled, "we [got] engaged in three weeks, a Syracuse Creative Writing Program record that, I believe, still stands".

Of his influences, Saunders has written:

Career From 1989 to 1996, Saunders worked as a technical writer and geophysical engineer for Radian International, an environmental engineering firm in Rochester, New York. He also worked for a time with an oil exploration crew in Sumatra in the early 1980s.

Since 1997, Saunders has been on the faculty of Syracuse University, teaching creative writing in the school's MFA program in addition to writing fiction and nonfiction.

Saunders's fiction often focuses on the absurdity of consumerism, corporate culture, and the role of mass media. While multiple reviewers have noted his writing's satirical tone, his work also raises moral and philosophical questions. The tragicomic element in his writing has earned Saunders comparisons to Kurt Vonnegut, whose work has inspired him.

Ben Stiller bought the film rights to CivilWarLand in Bad Decline in the late 1990s; , the project was in development by Stiller's company, Red Hour Productions. Saunders has also written a feature-length screenplay based on his short story "Sea Oak".

From 2006 to 2008, Saunders wrote a weekly column, "American Psyche", for The Guardians weekend magazine.

Saunders considered himself an Objectivist in his twenties but now views the philosophy unfavorably, likening it to neoconservatism. He is a student of Nyingma Buddhism.

Awards and honors Honors In 2001, Saunders received a Lannan Literary Fellowship in Fiction from the Lannan Foundation.

In 2006, Saunders was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. Also that year, he received a MacArthur Fellowship.

In 2009, Saunders received an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2013, Time magazine named Saunders one of its 100 most influential people. The author Mary Karr wrote for Time, "For more than a decade, George Saunders has been the best short-story writer in English". In 2014, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Awards George Saunders receiving the National Book Foundation's 2025 Distinguished Contribution to American Letters (DCAL).

Saunders has won the National Magazine Award for Fiction four times: in 1994, for "The 400-Pound CEO" (published in Harper's); in 1996, for "Bounty" (also published in Harper's); in 2000, for "The Barber's Unhappiness" (published in The New Yorker); and in 2004, for "The Red Bow" (published in Esquire). Saunders won second prize in the 1997 O. Henry Awards for his short story "The Falls", initially published in the January 22, 1996, issue of The New Yorker.

In 2013, Saunders won the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story. His short-story collection Tenth of December was named one of the "10 Best Books of 2013" by the editors of The New York Times Book Review. In a January 2013 cover story, The New York Times Magazine called Tenth of December "the best book you'll read this year". One of the stories in the collection, "Home", was a 2011 Bram Stoker Award finalist.

In 2017, Saunders published his first novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, which won the Booker Prize and was a New York Times bestseller.

On November 19, 2025, the National Book Foundation presented its 2025 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters (DCAL) to Saunders at the 76th National Book Awards Ceremony and Benefit Dinner. +Literary awards Year Title Award Category Result . 1994 "The 400-Pound CEO" National Magazine AwardsFiction 1997 "The Falls" O. Henry Awards — 2004 National Magazine Awards Fiction 2013 Tenth of December: Stories Goodreads Choice Award Fiction The Story Prize — 2014Folio Prize— National Book Award Fiction 2017Lincoln in the Bardo Goodreads Choice Awards Historical Fiction Man Booker Prize — Waterstones Book of the Year — 2018 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence Fiction Audie Awards Audiobook of the Year Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize Fiction Locus Award First Novel Premio Gregor von Rezzori — 2019 International Dublin Literary Award — Tähtivaeltaja Award — 2021 A Swim in a Pond in the Rain Goodreads Choice Awards Non-Fiction 2022 Liberation Day: Stories BookTube Prize Fiction Los Angeles Times Book Prize Ray Bradbury Prize 2023—Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction—

Other honors Lannan Foundation – Lannan Literary Fellowship, 2001 MacArthur Fellowship, 2006 Guggenheim Fellowship, 2006 American Academy of Arts and Letters, Academy Award, 2009 PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story, 2013 The New York Times Book Review'''s "10 Best Books of 2013", Tenth of December: Stories American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Elected as Member, 2014 American Academy of Arts and Letters, Inducted as Member, 2018 The House of Culture (Stockholm) International Literary Prize, 2018

Selected works

Story collections CivilWarLand in Bad Decline (1996) (short stories and a novella) Pastoralia (2000) (short stories and a novella) In Persuasion Nation (2006) (short stories) Tenth of December: Stories (2013) (short stories) Fox 8 (2018, long story (first publ. as an e-book 2013)) Liberation Day: Stories (2022) (short stories)

Novels The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil (2005, novella) Lincoln in the Bardo (2017) Vigil (2026)

Nonfiction

Children's books The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip (2000)

Essays and reporting

Anthologies Fakes: An Anthology of Pseudo-Interviews, Faux-Lectures, Quasi-Letters, "Found" Texts, and Other Fraudulent Artifacts, edited by David Shields and Matthew Vollmer (2012) Cappelens Forslags Conversational Lexicon Volume II, edited by Pil Cappelen Smith, published by Cappelens Forslag (2016) ISBN 978-82-999643-4-0

Interviews "Choose Your Own Adventure: A Conversation With Jennifer Egan and George Saunders". New York Times Magazine, November 2015. "A Conversation with George Saunders". Image Journal, 2016. "George Saunders: The Art of Fiction No. 245". The Paris Review, issue 231 (Winter 2019). "An Interview with George Saunders". Believer Magazine, January 2021. "George Saunders on A Swim in a Pond in the Rain." Mayday, March 2021.

Stories

+ Title Publication Collected in "A Lack of Order in the Floating Object Room" Northwest Review 24.2 (Winter 1986) - "In the Park, Higher than the Town" Puerto del Sol 22.2 (Spring 1987) - "Downtrodden Mary's Failed Campaign of Terror" Quarterly West 34 (Winter-Spring 1992) CivilWarLand in Bad Decline "CivilWarLand in Bad Decline" The Kenyon Review 14.4 (Autumn 1992) "Offloading for Mrs. Schwartz" The New Yorker (October 5, 1992) "The 400-Pound CEO" Harper's (February 1993) "The Wavemaker Falters" Witness 7.2 (1993) "Sticks" Story (Winter 1994) Tenth of December "Isabelle" Indiana Review (April 1994) CivilWarLand in Bad Decline "Bounty" Harper's (April 1995) "The Falls" The New Yorker (January 22, 1996) Pastoralia "Winky" The New Yorker (July 28, 1997) "The Deacon" The New Yorker (December 22–29, 1997) - "The End of FIRPO in the World" The New Yorker (May 18, 1998) Pastoralia "Sea Oak" The New Yorker (December 28, 1998) "I Can Speak!"™ The New Yorker (June 21–28, 1999) In Persuasion Nation "The Barber's Unhappiness" The New Yorker (December 20, 1999) Pastoralia "Exhortation"aka "Four Institutional Monologues I" McSweeney's 4 (Winter 2000) Tenth of December "93990"aka "Four Institutional Monologues IV" In Persuasion Nation "Pastoralia" The New Yorker (April 3, 2000) Pastoralia "My Flamboyant Grandson" The New Yorker (January 28, 2002) In Persuasion Nation "Jon" The New Yorker (January 27, 2003) "The Red Bow" Esquire (September 2003) "Christmas"aka "Chicago Christmas, 1984" The New Yorker (December 22, 2003) "Bohemians" The New Yorker (January 19, 2004) "My Amendment" The New Yorker (March 8, 2004) "Adams" The New Yorker (August 9, 2004) "Brad Carrigan, American" Harper's (March 2005) "CommComm" The New Yorker (August 5, 2005) "In Persuasion Nation" Harper's (November 2005) "Puppy" The New Yorker (May 28, 2007) Tenth of December "Al Roosten" The New Yorker (February 2, 2009) "Victory Lap" The New Yorker (October 5, 2009) "Fox 8" McSweeney's "San Francisco Panorama" (January 2010) Fox 8 "Escape from Spiderhead" The New Yorker (December 20–27, 2010) Tenth of December "Home" The New Yorker (June 13, 2011) "My Chivalric Fiasco" Harper's (September 2011) "Tenth of December" The New Yorker (October 31, 2011) "The Semplica Girl Diaries" The New Yorker (October 15, 2012) "Mother's Day" The New Yorker (February 8–15, 2016) Liberation Day "Elliott Spencer" The New Yorker (August 19, 2019) "Love Letter" The New Yorker (April 6, 2020) "Ghoul" The New Yorker (November 9, 2020) "The Mom of Bold Action" The New Yorker (August 30, 2021) "Liberation Day" Liberation Day (2022) "A Thing at Work" "Sparrow" "My House" "Thursday" The New Yorker (June 12, 2023) - "The Third Premier" The New Yorker (August 29, 2024) - "The Moron Factory" The Atlantic (March 2025) -