Elif Batuman
Encyclopedia
Elif Batuman is an American author, academic, and journalist.
She won a 2010 Whiting Writers' Award
Whiting Writers' Award
The Whiting Writers' Award is an American award presented annually to ten emerging writers in fiction, nonfiction, poetry and plays. The award is sponsored by the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation and has been presented since 1985. As of 2007, winners receive US $50,000.-External links:**...

.

Life

Born in New York to Turkish parents, she grew up in New Jersey. She graduated from Harvard College
Harvard College
Harvard College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is one of two schools within Harvard University granting undergraduate degrees...

, and received her doctorate in comparative literature
Comparative literature
Comparative literature is an academic field dealing with the literature of two or more different linguistic, cultural or national groups...

 from Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

, where she taught. Batuman is currently the writer-in-residence at Koç University
Koç University
Koç University is a private, non-profit institution, founded in 1993 and located in Istanbul, Turkey. One of the top universities in Turkey, it is supported by the financial resources of the Vehbi Koç Foundation, set up by Vehbi Koç, a leading Turkish businessman, “to serve humanity by increasing...

. While in graduate school, Batuman studied the Uzbek language
Uzbek language
Uzbek is a Turkic language and the official language of Uzbekistan. It has about 25.5 million native speakers, and it is spoken by the Uzbeks in Uzbekistan and elsewhere in Central Asia...

 in Samarkand
Samarkand
Although a Persian-speaking region, it was not united politically with Iran most of the times between the disintegration of the Seleucid Empire and the Arab conquest . In the 6th century it was within the domain of the Turkic kingdom of the Göktürks.At the start of the 8th century Samarkand came...

, Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan , officially the Republic of Uzbekistan is a doubly landlocked country in Central Asia and one of the six independent Turkic states. It shares borders with Kazakhstan to the west and to the north, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the east, and Afghanistan and Turkmenistan to the south....

. Her dissertation, titled "The Windmill and the Giant: Double-Entry Bookkeeping
Double-entry bookkeeping system
A double-entry bookkeeping system is a set of rules for recording financial information in a financial accounting system in which every transaction or event changes at least two different nominal ledger accounts....

 in the Novel," is about the process of social research and solitary construction undertaken by novelists. In 2007, she was the recipient of a Rona Jaffe
Rona Jaffe
Rona Jaffe was a popular American novelist, publishing numerous works from 1958-2003. She may have been best known for her controversial novel, Mazes and Monsters...

 Foundation Writers' Award.

In February, 2010, she published her first book, The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them, based on material previously published in The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...

, Harper's Magazine
Harper's Magazine
Harper's Magazine is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts, with a generally left-wing perspective. It is the second-oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S. . The current editor is Ellen Rosenbush, who replaced Roger Hodge in January 2010...

, and n+1
N+1
n+1 is a New York–based American literary magazine that publishes social criticism, political commentary, essays, art, poetry, book reviews, and short fiction. It is published three times each year, and content is published on several times each week...

, which details her experiences as a graduate student. Her writing has been described as "almost helplessly epigrammatical."

She currently resides in Twin Peaks, San Francisco.

Works

  • Christopher Hitchens, Robert Atwan (eds) The Best American Essays 2010, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010, ISBN 9780547394510

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK