Katie Kitamura’s most recent novel is the international bestseller Audition. A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Booker Prize, and National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, it was one of President Obama’s Favorite Books of 2025. It was also a finalist for the Gotham Book Prize and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize, Carol Shields Prize, Prix Femina, Prix Littéraire Les Inrockuptibles, Grand Prix des Lectrices ELLE, and Prix Rive Gauche à Paris. Her previous novel, Intimacies, was one of The New York Times’ 10 Best Books of 2021, longlisted for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, and one of President Obama’s Favorite Books of 2021. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Rome Prize in Literature, Berlin Prize, Cullman Center Fellowship, and the Prix Littéraire Lucien-Barrière, Kitamura’s work has been translated into 29 languages and is being adapted for film. She teaches in the Creative Writing Program at New York University.
As a Franke Visiting Fellow, Kitamura will work on her sixth novel, Permission, under contact to Riverhead Books. Told from multiple points of view, across three generations and three continents, Permission is about national identity and personal memory, with characters engaging with languages they do not speak, or languages they only partially remember.