Hanya Yanagihara

Biography

Hanya Yanagihara (born 1974) is an American author and the editor-in-chief of T: The New York Times Style Magazine. Her debut novel The People in the Trees (2013) was well-received; A Little Life (2015) became one of the most discussed and divisive novels of the decade, a finalist for the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Award. Yanagihara has spoken about deliberately writing Jude's past from imagination rather than research — she wanted the suffering to be invented, not documentary — and about the novel being written at extraordinary speed (the first draft in eighteen months). She has described Jude as a character who chose her, not the reverse.

Hanya Yanagihara at a glance