Dana Spiotta is a highly acclaimed author of literary fiction novels. She was born in 1966 and has written several successful novels, including "Stone Arabia" and "Eat the Document." Both of these novels were finalists for national awards, with "Eat the Document" winning the prestigious Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Spiotta has also received numerous fellowships, including the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow and the Guggenheim Fellow.
Spiotta's writing career began with the publication of her first novel, "Lightning Field," by Scribner in 2001. The novel received critical acclaim, with the New York Times praising her "uncanny feel for the absurdities and sadnesses of contemporary life, and an unerring ear for how people talk and try to cope today." "Lightning Field" was also named a New York Times Notable Book of the year and a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the West.
Spiotta's second novel, "Eat the Document," was published in 2006 and was a finalist for the National Book Award. It also received the Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times described "Eat the Document" as "stunning" and possessing "the staccato ferocity of a Joan Didion essay and the razzle-dazzle language and the historical resonance of a Don DeLillo novel." Spiotta's third novel, "Stone Arabia," was published in 2011.
Spiotta has continued to write and publish successful novels, including "Innocents and Others" in 2016 and "Wayward" in 2021. She has received numerous awards for her work, including the Rome Prize for Literature in 2008 and the John Updike Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2017. Spiotta currently lives in Syracuse, New York, where she teaches in the Syracuse University MFA program.