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Joshua Ferris Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Author Biography  | Interview  | Books by this Author  | Read-Alikes

Joshua Ferris
Photo: Kelly Campbell

Joshua Ferris

Joshua Ferris Biography

Joshua Ferris is the author of three previous novels, Then We Came to the End, The Unnamed and To Rise Again at a Decent Hour, and a collection of stories, The Dinner Party. He was a finalist for the National Book Award, winner of the Barnes and Noble Discover Award and the PEN/Hemingway Award, and was named one of The New Yorker's "20 Under 40" writers in 2010. To Rise Again at a Decent Hour won the Dylan Thomas Prize and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. His short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, and Best American Short Stories. He lives in New York.

Joshua Ferris's website

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Interview

Joshua Ferris talks about his first novel, Then We Came to the End, set in a Chicago ad agency during the business downturn at the end of the 1990s.

Tell us a little about your writing background up to this point

I lived in Key West as a kid, and there I started writing imitation Alfred Hitchcock stories — not "The Birds" but, given Key West's coastal view, "The Crabs." Many good people, boaters and sunbathers, were eaten alive as Hitchcock turned in his grave. Then in college, at the University of Iowa, I started writing stories again — again imitations but with sights set a little higher, or at least more literary: Nabokov, Barthelme. Shortly after college I got a job in advertising where I wrote ad copy for national brands, which taught me a good many things. And after my time in advertising I enrolled in the MFA program at the University of California, Irvine, where I started Then We Came to the End.


So you had experience working in an ad agency. Is that how you arrived at the setting of your novel?

Ad agencies can be a lot of fun. Creative departments are full of toys and games and wacky surprises, and throwing a Nerf football down the hallway to release tension isn't immediate cause for walking papers. I wanted my characters to have the freedom to do certain things that wouldn't fly, say, in a law firm. ...

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Books by this Author

Books by Joshua Ferris at BookBrowse
A Calling for Charlie Barnes jacket The Dinner Party jacket To Rise Again at a Decent Hour jacket The Unnamed jacket
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Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for Joshua Ferris but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose read-alikes

  • Kate Christensen

    Kate Christensen

    Kate Christensen is the author of eight novels, most recently Welcome Home, Stranger. Her fourth novel, The Great Man, won the 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. She has also published two food-centric memoirs, Blue Plate ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    The Unnamed

    Try:
    The Astral
    by Kate Christensen

  • Jeffrey Eugenides

    Jeffrey Eugenides

    Jeffrey Eugenides was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1960. He graduated magna cum laude from Brown University, and received an M.A. in English and Creative Writing from Stanford University in 1986. His first ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    The Unnamed

    Try:
    The Marriage Plot
    by Jeffrey Eugenides

We recommend 27 similar authors


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