Benjamin Taylor received a 2021 Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His memoir?Here We Are?was?published by?Penguin Books in May 2020 and was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. His?previous?memoir,?The Hue and Cry at Our House, received the 2018?Los Angeles Times/Christopher Isherwood Prize and was named a?New York Times?Editors’ Choice; his?Proust: The Search?was named a Best Book of 2016 by Thomas Mallon in?The New York Times Book?Review?and Robert McCrum in?The Observer?(London); and his?Naples Declared: A Walk Around the Bay?was named a Best Book of 2012 by Judith Thurman in?The New Yorker. He is also the?author of two novels,?Tales Out of School,?winner of the 1996 Harold Ribalow Prize, and?The Book of Getting Even,?winner of a Barnes & Noble Discover Award. He edited?Saul Bellow: Letters, named a Best Book of 2010 by Michiko Kakutani in?The New York Times?and?Jonathan Yardley?in?The Washington Post, and Bellow’s?There Is Simply Too Much to Think About: Collected Nonfiction, also a?New York Times?Editors’ Choice. His edition of the collected stories of Susan Sontag,?Debriefing, was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2017. French and Italian ?translations?of?Here We Are?were published in 2021.?He is a past fellow and current trustee of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and serves as president of the Edward F. Albee Foundation.?Chasing Bright Medusas, his biography of Willa Cather, is due from Viking Press in 2023.
Adjunct Associate Professor, Writing