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Author Bio
Birth—June 7, 1977
Where—New York City, New York, USA
Education—B.A., Harvard University; Ph.D., Stanford University
Awards—Whiting Award
Currently—lives in New York City, New York


Elif Batuman was born in New York City to Turkish parents and grew up in New Jersey. She graduated from Harvard and received her doctorate in comparative literature from Stanford University. While in graduate school, Batuman studied the Uzbek language in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.

In February 2010, Batuman published her first book, The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them. The essays detail her experiences as a graduate student and are based on material previously published in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, and n+1.

Batuman's debut novel, The Idiot, a semi-autobiographical bildingsroman, came out in 2017 to high critical praise.

From 2010 to 2013, Batuman was writer-in-residence at Koc University in Istanbul, Turkey. She now lives in New York City. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 12/12/2017.)