“I grew up as a step-kid, always a little outside, always trying hard to follow and fit in. But over time, I've come to feel that my tendency toward self-erasure is a deep and real part of me. I think I'd be this way no matter how I grew up.”

American novelist and short-story writer

Jennifer Egan is an American novelist and short-story writer. She is best known for her fiction, especially the novel A Visit from the Goon Squad, which won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. From 2018 to 2020, Egan served as president of PEN America. Her reputation rests on fiction and on work that has earned major literary recognition.