|
HEAR MORE Click here to listen to Eisenberg read from Twilight of the Superheroes. |
Hand Deborah Eisenberg a stack of money—say, $500,000—and the author and UVA creative writing instructor will buy time. At least, that’s what she told the New York Daily News shortly after she was awarded one of 24 MacArthur “genius” grants last September. The prize—a no-strings-attached award be doled out over the next five years—gives Eisenberg freedom to work on her next collection of stories.
|
Deborah “MacArthur Genius” Eisenberg teaches Creative Writing at UVA in the fall and spends the rest of the year in New York City, living in her loft in Chelsea. |
She released her most recent, Twilight of the Superheroes, in 2006. A collection of tightly woven stories about America’s reaction to the events of September 11, Twilight garnered a lot of positive attention from critics and, in addition to “genius,” earned her another title: “one of the most important fiction writers now at work.” That’s what Ben Marcus called her in a 2006 New York Times review of the book.
“At work,” indeed. To wit, when we contacted Eisenberg recently, she was, as she put it, “swamped with obligations and chores right now.” At 63, she has nearly 35 years of writing under her belt, four collections of short stories, five O. Henry awards, a Rea Award for the Short Story, a Whiting Writers’ Award and a Lannan Foundation Fellowship. Superhero indeed.
