Unlike the bleak-as-hell norm provided by Fashion editors and Tinseltown casting agents, The New Yorker’s definition of youth is as elastic as the term will allow. Sure, it’s a reflection of literary fiction’s elongated learning curve and time intensive nature (as well as the fact that no one cares what writers look like) but it’s still refreshing to see a list of the “Best Young Anythings” that’s bookended, on one side, at 40 years of age.
The list was compiled for the magazine’s upcoming fiction issue which will showcase “key writers of this generation.” If the pitch sounds familiar, a similar list was published in 1999, spruiking David Foster Wallace, Jhumpa Lahiri, Jonathan Franzen, Jeffery Eugenides, Michael Chabon and Junot Díaz (among others) as the next big things in fiction. If their current predictions echo those of ’99 we should expect a few Pulitzer Prizes in the decade to come.
Check out the list below…
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 32
Chris Adrian, 39
Daniel Alarcón, 33
David Bezmozgis, 37
Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, 38
Joshua Ferris, 35
Jonathan Safran Foer, 33
Nell Freudenberger, 35
Rivka Galchen, 34
Nicole Krauss, 35
Yiyun Li, 37
Dinaw Mengestu, 31
Philipp Meyer, 36
C. E. Morgan, 33
Téa Obreht, 24
Z Z Packer, 37
Karen Russell, 28
Salvatore Scibona, 35
Gary Shteyngart, 37
Wells Tower, 37.
Via NY Mag
