“I was on a very bumpy plane ride, an overnight flight. I was so miserable, and I pulled out 'David Copperfield,' and I forgot how scared and tired I was, and I thought, 'This is what reading should be.' I'm utterly transported out of my current situation.”

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.