CU Hosts Author and Satirist, Gary Shteyngart

The University of Colorado Boulder welcomes award winning author and satirist, Gary Shteyngart for a public reading and discussion of his critically acclaimed memoir “Little Failure” on Thursday, February 20 at 7:00 pm in University Memorial Center, Room 235. Already a New York Times bestseller, “Little Failure” is a candid, witty, deeply poignant account of Shteyngart’s experiences as a Jewish-Russian immigrant in Queens, New York, his haphazard college pursuits, and his initial forays into a literary career. The LA Times book review described “Little Failure” as “an ecstatic depiction of survival, guilt and perseverance…as vivid, original and funny as anything contemporary U.S. literature has to offer.”  In addition to reading from “Little Failure“, Shteyngart will be in conversation with Sasha Senderovich, Assistant Professor in Germanic and Slavic Languages & Literatures and the Program in Jewish Studies at CU Boulder about his memoir and work in the past decade. Shteyngart will also be conducting a colloquium for faculty and students on the CU Boulder campus. Shteyngart was recently featured on NPR’s Fresh Air – find his incredibly funny interview with Terry Gross here and learn “why you can’t be that furry” in America.

Gary Shteyngart, who was born in the Soviet Union in 1972 and immigrated to the United States with his family in 1979, is considered to be one of America’s best satirists.  His New York Times bestselling novels include “Super Sad True Love Story” (2010), which was the first American novel to win the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction and was selected as one of the best books of the year by over 40 news journals and magazines around the world. “Absurdistan” (2006) was chosen as one of the 10 best books of the year by The New York Times Book Review and Time magazine. “The Russian Debutante’s Handbook” (2002) won the Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction and the National Jewish Book Award for fiction.  His essays and other works of fiction have appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, Esquire, GQ, The New and many other publications. Shteyngart is also an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Columbia University’s School of the Arts.

This event is free and open to the public but as space is limited, RSVPs are appreciated. Please email CUJewishStudies@colorado.edu or call 303.492.7143.  “Little Failure“ and other books by Gary Shteyngart will be available for purchase and signing after the event. Additional information can be found at http://jewishstudies.colorado.edu.

Gary Shteyngart’s visit is presented by the University of Colorado Boulder’s Program in Jewish Studies and co-sponsored by Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures, the Department of English, the Center for Humanities and the Arts, the Center for Western Civilization, the Department of Comparative Literature and the Humanities, the President’s Fund for the Humanities and the Boulder Jewish Community Center.   For more information, please visit jewishstudies.colorado.edu or call 303.492.7143.