Over the course of two very different novels, Hanya Yanagihara has established herself as a formidable and versatile new literary voice.
Her debut, 2013’s The People in the Trees, had Yanagihara leading readers to a fictional Micronesian island nation, and to a turtle with life-giving flesh, weaving a magical premise into an examination of moral failure and ecological abuse.
Then, there was last year’s critically celebrated A Little Life – the Man Booker and National Book Award shortlisted novel that one New Yorker critic warned could ‘drive you mad, consume you, and take over your life’. That book, at turns harrowing and heartening, performed a complex balancing act: offering both a tribute to male adult friendship and a deep consideration of the toll of childhood trauma across many years.
Yanagihara’s linguistic versatility extends beyond the confines of the novel – she’s also a travel writer, and deputy editor of the New York Times’ style magazine, T.
Of writing A Little Life, Yanagihara has said that the novel became ‘more real than life itself. That process … is absorbing and dangerous.’ Hear from a writer who is certain to surprise and challenge – and whose fictional worlds hold readers in thrall, long after the final page.
In conversation with Jason Steger.
Featuring
Featuring

Hanya Yanagihara is the author of A Little Life and The People in the Trees. She is deputy editor at the New York Times‘ T Magazine, and lives in New York City.

Jason Steger is books editor at The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. He was a regular panelist on ABC TV’s The Book Club. Steger joined Fairfax as business editor of The Sunday Age in 1990. He became deputy features editor and then arts and books editor. He was appointed deputy managing... Read more
Watch, Listen, Read

Listen
The Maternal Question
22 Jun 2022

Read
Hot Desk Extract: three approaches to mem*ry
20 Jun 2022

Watch
Reading with Consent
14 Jun 2022

Watch
Teens Talk... Consent
14 Jun 2022

Read
Paul Dalla Rosa on An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life
10 Jun 2022

Read
'Nothing connects humans like fiction'
9 Jun 2022