Distinguished Alumna

Jennifer Egan is the 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 New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. Her new novel, The Candy House, a companion to A Visit From the Goon Squad, was named one of the New York Times’s 10 Best Books of 2022 and one of President Obama’s favorite reads of the year. She has served as President of PEN America and twice as Artist-in-Residence in the English Department at the University of Pennsylvania, where she has taught courses in 19th and 20th Century literature. Her year-long reporting on street homelessness and supportive housing in New York City was published in The New Yorker in September of 2023.