Laura van den Berg


Laura van den Berg is an American fiction writer. She is the author of five works of fiction. Her first two collections of short stories were each shortlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, in 2010 and 2014. In 2021, she was awarded the Strauss Livings Award from the American [Academy of Arts and Letters|American Academy of Arts & Letters] and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Biography

Laura van den Berg was born and raised in Florida. She has a BA from Rollins College and an M.F.A. from Emerson College. Her stories have been published in The Paris Review, McSweeney's, BOMB, Virginia Quarterly Review, Conjunctions, American Short Fiction, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train and One Story.
Her first collection of short stories, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us, was published in 2009, and her second collection, The Isle of Youth, was published in 2013. A third short story collection, I Hold a Wolf by the Ears, was published in 2020.
Her other books include two novels, Find Me and The Third Hotel, which was a finalist for the Young Lions Fiction Award. Van den Berg has also published a chapbook of flash fiction, There Will Be No More Good Nights Without Good Nights.
Van den Berg lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband, Paul Yoon.
She is currently a senior lecturer at Harvard University in the English Department.

Awards and honors

Selected works