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Maggie Shipstead

Maggie Shipstead

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Maggie Shipstead is an American novelist who lives in Los Angeles. She was shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2021 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’.

 

Maggie Shipstead reads from 'Great Circle'

Maggie Shipstead reads from 'Great Circle'

 

2021 Booker Prize shortlisted author 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

Maggie Shipstead, Booker Prize Q&A, 2021

Read more on Maggie Shipstead

Maggie Shipstead author of Great Circle

Maggie Shipstead Q&A

‘I’m sadly incapable of planning my books. I just have to leap and then hope I’m able to resolve all the problems.’

All nominated books

Great Circle
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