Fiction — Lisa Halliday (Whiting Award 2017)

Lisa Halliday is an American author born in Medfield, Massachusetts, to a working-class family; she was the first in her family to attend Harvard University, studying art history. After working as a literary agent at The Wylie Agency where she had a relationship with Philip Roth, she left in 2006 to focus on writing, later marrying British editor Theo and moving to Milan, Italy. She received the Whiting Award for her debut novel Asymmetry, published in 2018, which was named among the best books of the year by The New York Times and others.