Rebecca Makkai

Award-Winning Author

Rebecca Makkai is the author of the novels The Great Believers, The Hundred-Year House, and The Borrower, and the story collection Music for Wartime. A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, The Great Believers received an American Library Association Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was listed on the Top Ten Books of 2018 by The New York Times.

In her latest novel I Have Some Questions for You, a successful film professor and podcaster, Bodie Kane, is content to forget her past—the family tragedy that marred her adolescence, her four miserable years at a New Hampshire boarding school, and the murder of her former roommate, Thalia Keith, in their senior year. But when her alma mater invites her back to teach a course, Bodie is inexorably drawn to the case and its increasingly apparent flaws. Named one of the best books of 2023 by over a dozen publications, the spellbinding novel was hailed by People as “a twisty, immersive whodunit perfect for fans of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History.”

Makkai’s work has been featured in publications such as Harper’s and Tin House. Her short fiction has been anthologized in The Pushcart Prize XLI and The Best American Short Stories. The recipient of a 2014 NEA fellowship, Makkai is on the MFA faculties of Sierra Nevada College and Northwestern University, and she is the Artistic Director of StoryStudio Chicago.