Brooklyn College and its writing programs have been a wellspring for a number of award-winning novelists, playwrights, poets, and authors. Three have made the distinguished year-end best books lists in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Time magazine. Ben Lerner, distinguished professor of English and a 2015 MacArthur “genius” grant recipient, made all three best books lists with The Topeka School (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019). Associate Professor of English Helen Phillips ’07 M.F.A. was cited in Time magazine’s list for The Need (Simon and Schuster, 2019), which was also longlisted for the National Book Award. Ocean Vuong ’12, a 2019 MacArthur “genius” grant winner, was recently named to The New Yorker magazine’s Best Books of 2019 list, and included in both The Washington Post and the Time list for his first novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (Penguin, 2019), which was also nominated for the 2019 National Book Award and the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Award.
