The Friends of the Central Library welcomes George Saunders to the 21st Season of the Rosamond Gifford Lectures Series.

George Saunders, born in 1958, is an American writer of short stories, essays, novellas and children’s books. He grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. In 1988, he obtained an MA in creative writing from Syracuse University where he has been on the faculty since 1997. His award winning work includes the short-story collections “CivilWarLand in Bad Decline,” “Pastoralia,” “In Persuasion Nation,” and the “Tenth of December” (2013 National Book Award Finalist, Fiction and recipient of the Folio Prize). Most recently, a transcript of his 2013 convocation address at SU was published as “Congratulations, By the Way: Some Thoughts on Kindness.” Named by The New Yorker one of the best American writers under the age of forty in 1999, Saunders has received fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.