George Saunders


George Saunders is an American writer. He is best known for his short stories and his novel Lincoln in the Bardo, which won the Booker Prize. Saunders' short stories have been published as several collections, including CivilWarLand in Bad Decline and Tenth of December: Stories.
A professor at Syracuse University, Saunders won the National Magazine Award for fiction in 1994, 1996, 2000, and 2004, and second prize in the O. Henry Awards in 1997. His first story collection, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, was a finalist for the 1996 PEN/Hemingway Award. In 2006, Saunders received a MacArthur Fellowship and won the World Fantasy Award for his short story "CommComm".
His story collection In Persuasion Nation was a finalist for The Story Prize in 2007. In 2013, he won the PEN/Malamud Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Tenth of December: Stories won The Story Prize for short-story collections and the inaugural Folio Prize.

Early life and education

Saunders was born in Amarillo, Texas. He grew up in Oak Forest, Illinois, near Chicago, attended St. Damian Catholic School and graduated from Oak Forest High School in Oak Forest, Illinois. He spent some of his early twenties working as a roofer in Chicago, a doorman in Beverly Hills, and a slaughterhouse knuckle-puller. In 1981, he received a B.S. in geophysical engineering from Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado. Of his scientific background, Saunders has said, "any claim I might make to originality in my fiction is really just the result of this odd background: basically, just me working inefficiently, with flawed tools, in a mode I don't have sufficient background to really understand. Like if you put a welder to designing dresses."
In 1988, he was awarded an M.F.A. in creative writing from Syracuse University, where he worked with Tobias Wolff. At Syracuse, he met Paula Redick, a fellow writer, whom he married. Saunders recalled, "we engaged in three weeks, a Syracuse Creative Writing Program record that, I believe, still stands".
Of his influences, Saunders has written:

Career

From 1989 to 1996, Saunders worked as a technical writer and geophysical engineer for Radian International, an environmental engineering firm in Rochester, New York. He also worked for a time with an oil exploration crew in Sumatra in the early 1980s.
Since 1997, Saunders has been on the faculty of Syracuse University, teaching creative writing in the school's MFA program in addition to writing fiction and nonfiction. In 2006, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and a $500,000 MacArthur Fellowship. He was a Visiting Writer at Wesleyan University and Hope College in 2010 and participated in Wesleyan's Distinguished Writers Series and Hope College's Visiting Writers Series. His nonfiction collection, The Braindead Megaphone, was published in 2007.
Saunders's fiction often focuses on the absurdity of consumerism, corporate culture, and the role of mass media. While multiple reviewers have noted his writing's satirical tone, his work also raises moral and philosophical questions. The tragicomic element in his writing has earned Saunders comparisons to Kurt Vonnegut, whose work has inspired him.
Ben Stiller bought the film rights to CivilWarLand in Bad Decline in the late 1990s; as of 2007, the project was in development by Stiller's company, Red Hour Productions. Saunders has also written a feature-length screenplay based on his short story "Sea Oak".
He also contributed a weekly column, "American Psyche", to The Guardian's weekend magazine between 2006 and 2008.
Saunders considered himself an Objectivist in his twenties but now views the philosophy unfavorably, likening it to neoconservatism. He is a student of Nyingma Buddhism.

Awards and honors

Honors

In 2001, Saunders received a Lannan Literary Fellowship in Fiction from the Lannan Foundation.
In 2006, Saunders was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. Also that year, he received a MacArthur Fellowship.
In 2009, Saunders received an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2013, Time magazine named Saunders one of their 100 most influential people. The author Mary Karr wrote for Time that "or more than a decade, George Saunders has been the best short-story writer in English". In 2014, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Awards

Saunders has won the National Magazine Award for Fiction four times: in 1994, for "The 400-Pound CEO" ; in 1996, for "Bounty" ; in 2000, for "The Barber's Unhappiness" ; and in 2004, for "The Red Bow". Saunders won second prize in the 1997 O. Henry Awards for his short story "The Falls", initially published in the January 22, 1996, issue of The New Yorker.
In 2013, Saunders won the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story. His short-story collection Tenth of December was named one of the "10 Best Books of 2013" by the editors of The New York Times Book Review. In a January 2013 cover story, The New York Times Magazine called Tenth of December "the best book you'll read this year". One of the stories in the collection, "Home", was a 2011 Bram Stoker Award finalist.
In 2017, Saunders published his first novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, which won the Booker Prize and was a New York Times bestseller.
In 2025, the National Book Foundation presented its 2025 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters to Saunders at the 76th National Book Awards Ceremony and Benefit Dinner on November 19, 2025.
YearTitleAwardCategoryResult.
1994"The 400-Pound CEO"National Magazine AwardsFictionWon
1996"Bounty"National Magazine AwardsFictionWon
1996CivilWarLand in Bad DeclinePEN/Hemingway Award—
1997"The Falls"O. Henry Awards—
2000"The Barber's Unhappiness"National Magazine AwardsFictionWon
2003"The Red Bow"Bram Stoker AwardShort FictionNomitated
2004"The Red Bow"National Magazine AwardsFictionWon
2006In Persuasion NationThe Story Prize—
2006"CommComm"World Fantasy AwardShort StoryWon
2011"Home"Bram Stoker AwardShort FictionNomitated
2013Tenth of December: StoriesGoodreads Choice AwardFiction
2013Tenth of December: StoriesThe Story Prize—Won
2014Tenth of December: StoriesFolio Prize—Won
2014Tenth of December: StoriesNational Book AwardFiction
2017Lincoln in the BardoGoodreads Choice AwardsHistorical FictionNomitated
2017Lincoln in the BardoMan Booker Prize—Won
2017Lincoln in the BardoWaterstones Book of the Year—
2018Lincoln in the BardoAndrew Carnegie Medals for ExcellenceFiction
2018Lincoln in the BardoAudie AwardsAudiobook of the YearWon
2018Lincoln in the BardoChicago Tribune Heartland PrizeFictionWon
2018Lincoln in the BardoLocus AwardFirst Novel
2018Lincoln in the BardoPremio Gregor von Rezzori—Won
2019Lincoln in the BardoInternational Dublin Literary Award—
2019Lincoln in the BardoTähtivaeltaja Award—Nomitated
2021A Swim in a Pond in the RainGoodreads Choice AwardsNon-FictionNomitated
2022Liberation Day: StoriesBookTube PrizeFiction
2022Liberation Day: StoriesLos Angeles Times Book PrizeRay Bradbury Prize
2023—Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction—Won

Other honors

Story collections

  • CivilWarLand in Bad Decline
  • Pastoralia
  • In Persuasion Nation
  • Fox 8
  • Tenth of December: Stories
  • ''Liberation Day: Stories''