40 under 40 – 2019 winners

Ottessa Moshfegh

Ottessa Moshfegh
Hometown: Boston
Current City: New York City
College: Barnard College

American Author and Novelist
Boston, Massachusetts
Family is from Zagreb, Croatia

Ottessa Moshfegh (born May 20, 1981) is an American author and novelist. Her debut novel, Eileen, won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and was a fiction finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Moshfegh was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Her mother was born in Croatia and her father, was born in Iran. Her parents were both musicians and taught at the New England Conservatory of Music. As a child, Moshfegh learned to play piano and clarinet. Moshfegh received her BA from Barnard College in 2002. She then moved to China, where she taught English and opened a music venue. In her mid-twenties, Moshfegh moved to New York City.

She worked for Overlook Press in book production, and then as an assistant for Jean Stein, the oral historian. In 2009, she left the city and earned an MFA from Brown University. Fence Books published her novella, McGlue, in 2014. Her novel Eileen was published by Penguin Press in August 2015, and received positive reviews.

The book was shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize. Homesick for Another World, a collection of short stories, was published in January 2017. Her latest novel, My Year of Rest and Relaxation, was published on July 10, 2018 by Penguin Press. A new book, Death in Her Hands, comes out in 2020. She’s currently at work on a historical novel about a Chinese immigrant in Victorian San Francisco.

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