Reading is followed by discussion with the author and UCLA professor Mona Simpson, who organizes this series.

Her books have been translated into thirty languages. She has been the recipient of several awards, including the Rome Prize in Literature, and a Guggenheim. The Friend, Sigrid Nunez’s eighth book, follows a woman who has agreed to care for her deceased friend’s Great Dane, Apollo, even though her Manhattan apartment does not allow pets. She also examines the teaching of writing, particularly that of her deceased mentor who has recently taken his own life. The Friend is thick with quotations and anecdotes from the lives and work of many writers, in a way that can recall the bird’s-nest-made-of-citations novels of David Markson. Sigrid Nunez is the author of the novels Salvation City, The Last of Her Kind, A Feather on the Breath of God, and For Rouenna, among others.She is also the author of Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag.She has been the recipient of several awards, including a Whiting Award, the Rome Prize in Literature, and a Berlin Prize Fellowship. She is also the author of Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag. Nunez has created a beautiful book that explores love and the relationships between friends, humans and animals, along with the great grief we experience when faced with the loss of a loved one. Sigrid Nunez is the author of the novels A Feather on the Breath of God, The Last of Her Kind, The Friend, and What Are You Going Through, among others. The New York Times Book Review says “You will emerge calmer, meditative, more thoughtful, as if you have benefited from an excellent literary massage of sorts.”

With grace and sardonic humor, Nunez shares the story of an unnamed narrator agreeing to help a terminally ill friend by seeing her through the last days of her life. National Book Award-winning author Sigrid Nunez shares her most recent novel What Are You Going Through, a meditation on friendship, empathy, and what it means to die well. Copresented by the UCLA Department of English

The friend nunez