Rebecca Makkai‘s latest novel, The Great Believers, was a finalist for the 2018 National Book Award and has been shortlisted for the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence. Set during the AIDS epidemic in 1980s Chicago, “Great Believers soars,” says the Chicago Tribune. “A wily, seductive writer… Makkai has full command of her multi-generational perspective, and by its end, The Great Believers offers a grand fusion of the past and the present, the public and the personal. It’s remarkably alive despite all the loss it encompasses. And it’s right on target in addressing how the things that the world throws us feel gratuitously out of step with the lives we think we’re leading.” Makkai’s first novel, The Borrower, was a Booklist Top Ten Debut, an Indie Next pick, and an O Magazine selection. Her second novel, The Hundred-Year House, is the story of a haunted house and a haunted family, told in reverse. Library Journal calls it “stunning, ambitious, readable and intriguing.” It was chosen as the Chicago Writers Association’s novel of the year, and received raves in The New York Times Book Review and elsewhere. Makkai’s short fiction won a 2017 Pushcart Prize, was chosen for The Best American Short Stories for four consecutive years, and has been featured on Public Radio International’s Selected Shorts and This American Life. 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.