Maggie Shipstead on A Tale for the Time Being
Maggie Shipstead, author of the 2021 Booker Prize-shortlisted Great Circle, on why she loves Ruth Ozeki’s 2013 shortlisted novel A Tale for the Time Being.
Maggie Shipstead
Maggie Shipstead is an American novelist who lives in Los Angeles. She is shortlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize with Great Circle - her third novel.
Her debut, Seating Arrangements, was a New York Times bestseller in 2012 and won the Dylan Thomas Prize and LA Times Book Prize for First Fiction. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, a former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford and a two-time National Magazine Award finalist for fiction. Great Circle was inspired by a statue of New Zealand’s Jean Batten at Auckland airport. Shipstead’s plan was to write a book about ‘scale, travel and what it means to live a life that’s truly free’. She has a collection of short stories coming out next summer.
Maggie Shipstead reads from 'Great Circle'
I’m sadly incapable of planning my books. I wish I could, but instead I just have to leap and then hope I’m able to resolve all the problems I create
All nominated books
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2021. The lives of a fearless female aviator and the actress who portrays her on screen decades later intersect in Maggie Shipstead’s vivid, soaring novel.
