Catawba News Service

SALISBURY — Ottessa Moshfegh spoke about her most recent novel, “Lapvona,” at Catawba College’s 35th annual Brady Author’s Symposium.

Moshfegh is a fiction writer from New England. “Eileen,” her first novel, was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Man Booker Prize, and won the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction. “My Year of Rest and Relaxation,” “Death in her Hands” and “Lapvona,” her next three novels, were New York Times bestsellers. She is also the author of the short story collection “Homesick for Another World,” and a novella, “McGlue.”

Eileen has been made into a movie starring Anne Hathaway and Thomas McKenzie. This follows “Causeway,” a 2022 drama film written by Moshfegh, her husband Luke Goebel, and Elizabeth Sanders. Causeway starred Jennifer Lawrence and Brian Tyree Henry.

Others who have spoken at previous Brady Author’s Symposia include Tom Cooper, George Singleton, Reynolds Price, Josephine Humphreys, Anne Rivers Siddons, Dannye Romine Powell, Betty Adcock, Angela Davis-Gardner, Doris Betts, Lee Smith, Kay Gibbons, Fred Chappell, Robert Inman, Jan Karon, John Berendt, Pat Conroy, Terry Kay, Gail Godwin, Ann Hood, Tim McLaurin, Frances Mayes, Rick Bragg, Susan Vreeland, Jodi Picoult, Gish Jen, Joanne Harris, Chris Bohjalian, Elizabeth Berg, Colum McCann, Jane Hamilton, Sena Jeter Naslund, Meg Wolitzer, John Hart, Jane Smiley and Laila Lalami.

The Brady Author Symposium takes place annually in March. The event March 16 in the Robertson College Community Center included an opportunity to join Moshfegh for a lunch, a question and answer session, and book signing.