An Afternoon with Anthony Marra

Author Anthony Marra will read from and discuss “A Constellation of Vital Phenomena”, winner of the 2014 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for fiction. His novel – set in a nearly abandoned hospital in war-torn Chechnya – tells the story of eight-year-old girl Havaa, the neighbor who rescues her after her father’s disappearance, and Sonia, the doctor who shelters her over five dramatic days in December 2004.


About the speaker

Anthony Marra

Anthony Marra

In addition to the 2014 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Fiction, Anthony Marra is the winner of a Whiting Award, a Pushcart Prize, The Atlantic’s Student Writing Contest, and the Narrative Prize, and his work has been anthologized in Best American Nonrequired Reading 2012. He holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is currently a Jones Lecturer in Fiction at Stanford University. His first novel, “A Constellation of Vital Phenomena”, was published in May 2013 and will be translated into over a dozen languages.


Additional Resources

Foyles' Exclusive Interview with Anthony Marra

New York Times review of “A Constellation of Vital Phenomena”

BookBrowse Interview with Anthony Marra

Notable quotes from “A Constellation of Vital Phenomena”

More information about the Anisfielf-Wolf Book Awards