Jennifer Egan

Past PEN America President

Jennifer Egan is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author of several novels and a short story collection. Her 2017 novel, Manhattan Beach, a New York Times bestseller, was awarded the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and was chosen as New York City’s One Book One New York read. Her previous novel, A Visit From the Goon Squad, won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was recently named one of the best books of the decade by Time Magazine and Entertainment Weekly. Her new novel, The Candy House, a companion to A Visit From the Goon Squad, was named one of The New York Times’ 10 Best Books of 2022 and one of President Obama’s favorite reads of the year. She recently completed a term as President of PEN America and is currently Artist-in-Residence in the English Department at the University of Pennsylvania. Also a journalist, her year-long reporting on street homelessness and supportive housing in New York City was published in The New Yorker in September, 2023.

Other works include The Invisible Circus, a novel that became a feature film starring Cameron Diaz in 2001; Look at Me, a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction in 2001; and The Keep. Her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, Granta, McSweeney’s, The Best American Short Stories, and other magazines and collections. She is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in fiction, and a Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Fellowship at The New York Public Library. Her nonfiction articles appear frequently in The New York Times Magazine, and her 2002 cover story on homeless children received the Carroll Kowal Journalism Award. Her article “The Bipolar Kid” received a 2009 Outstanding Media Award for Science and Health Reporting from the National Alliance on Mental Illness. She was born in Chicago and raised in San Francisco. She joined the PEN America Board in 2012 and completed her term as president in 2020.


Articles by Jennifer Egan

Wednesday March 11

A Coronavirus Update from PEN America

As the world faces a global health crisis, we at PEN America are encountering uncharted territory.

Friday January 11

PEN America President Jennifer Egan Calls for Justice for Jamal Khashoggi

We can best honor Jamal’s life, his work, and his ultimate sacrifice by insisting upon our right to speak the truth and by protecting those who speak it.