Elif Batuman's first novel, The Idiot, is a New York Times Notable Book for 2017. She is also the author of The Possessed (2010), a bestselling book of comic interconnected essays about the pursuit of Russian literature. Elif has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 2010, and holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Stanford. At MacDowell, she finished working on an essay about rental relatives in Japan, which is in the April 30, 2018 issue of The New Yorker, and started work on an essay collection about fiction and nonfiction.
While she was at MacDowell she found out that The Idiot was a Pulitzer finalist and has been shortlisted for the Women's Prize in Fiction in the UK.
