Gary Shteyngart

Infobox Writer

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name = Gary Shteyngart
caption = Gary Shteyngart at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books
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birthdate = 1972
birthplace = Leningrad, USSR
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occupation = Novelist
nationality = United States
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Gary Shteyngart (born 1972) is an American writer born in Leningrad, USSR (he alternately calls it "St. Leningrad" or "St. Leninsburg"). Much of his work is satirical and relies on the invention of elaborately fictitious yet somehow familiar places and times.

Life

Shteyngart spent the first seven years of his childhood living in a square dominated by a huge statue of Vladimir Lenin in what is now St. Petersburg, Russia; the city was then known as Leningrad. He comes from a Jewish family. He describes his family as typically Soviet. His father worked as an engineer in a Lomo camera factory; his mother was a pianist. Shteyngart emigrated to the United States in 1979 and was brought up with no television in the apartment in which he lived, and no spoken English. He did not shed his thick Russian accent until the age of 14. [ [http://books.guardian.co.uk/interviews/story/0,,2114545,00.html Ed Pilkington meets Gary Shteyngart, the author of Absurdistan | News | Guardian Unlimited Books ] ]

Having been forbidden to return to Russia, Shteyngart took a trip to Prague, which helped spawn his first novel, set in the fictitious European city of Prava. A graduate of Stuyvesant High School [cite magazine |url=http://www.educationupdate.com/archives/2006/May/html/car-metamorphosis.html |title=The Metamorphosis of a Writer: An Interview with Gary Shteyngart |first=Liza |last=Young |journal=Education Update |month=May |year=2006 |accessdate=2007-11-01] in New York City, Oberlin College in Ohio, where he earned a degree in politics, and Hunter College of the City University of New York, where he earned an MFA in Creative Writing. During the early 90's he worked for some time at NYANA, a refugee resettlement agency in New York City (his co-workers there included Todd Solondz and Roman Turovsky). Shteyngart now lives in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He has taught writing at Hunter College, and is currently teaching writing at Columbia University [ [http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/news/#receivehighpraise Hunter News & Events ] ] and Princeton University.

Gary Shteyngart was a Citigroup Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, Germany, for Fall 2007.

Work

Shteyngart's novels include "The Russian Debutante's Handbook" (2003) and "Absurdistan" (2006), and his other writing has appeared in "The New Yorker", "Slate", "Granta", "Travel and Leisure", and "The New York Times". Random House will publish his third novel in September, 2009.

Bibliography

* "The Russian Debutante's Handbook" (2003)
* "Absurdistan" (2006)

References

External links

* [http://www.barnesandnoble.com/writers/writerdetails.asp?cid=1543143&z=y&z=y Biography at barnesandnoble.com]
* [http://www.forward.com/articles/1325/ Interview in the "Forward"]
* [http://www.webdelsol.com/Literary_Dialogues/interview-wds-shteyngart.htm Interview at "Web del Sol."]
* [http://www.moderndrunkardmagazine.com/issues/06_06/06_06_gary_shteyngart.html " Interview"] from Modern Drunkard Magazine titled '10 Drinks with Gary Shteyngart'.
* " [http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/30/books/review/30kirn.html?ei=5088&en=124fac7865d7455a&ex=1304049600&adxnnl=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1167856275-cjQUrR0UPJjiCjy1GFHUeQ "Absurdistan", by Gary Shteyngart – Russian Unorthodox] ", review by Walter Kirn, New York Times, April 30, 2006
* [http://brooklynheathen.com/200801/zadie-smith-mcnally/ With Zadie Smith at McNally Robinson]