Peter Orner

Peter Orner is the author of eight books, most recently the novel The Gossip Columnist’s Daughter, named one of the best books of 2025 by the New Yorker and the Chicago Tribune, as well as the essay collections Still No Word from You, a finalist for the PEN Award for the Art of the Essay, and Am I Alone Here?, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. His story collection Maggie Brown and Others was a New York Times Notable Book. Other books include Love and Shame and Love (Winner of the California Book Award), Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge, The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo (finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award), and Esther Stories. A recipient of the Rome Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship, Orner is also the editor of three books of oral history for the Voice of Witness series, and co-editor with Laura Lampton Scott of a new oral history series from McSweeney’s called “Dispatches.” His work has appeared in The New Yorker, the Atlantic, Harper’s, and the Paris Review and has been awarded four Pushcart Prizes. Orner read at Vanderbilt on September 24, 2026. This pop-up exhibit was inspired by The Gossip Columnist’s Daughter.