Katie Kitamura

Please plan for an evening with novelist Katie Kitamura at the Helen S. Lanier Reading Series on Friday, January 23, 2026 at 7pm at the University of Georgia Chapel. Admission is free and books will be available for purchase at the reading. 

As the Helen S. Lanier Distinguished Professor of English, Professor Obioma brings writers of various genres to campus to speak and share their work with the university and the greater Athens community. The series is aimed to showcase writers with international reach and recognition who can inspire conversations around topics pertinent to their work. Learn more about the Lanier Reading Series here.

Katie Kitamura’s most recent novel is Audition. A finalist for the Booker Prize, it was one of Barack Obama’s 2025 Summer Reads. She is also the author of Intimacies, one of The New York Times’ 10 Best Books of 2021 and one of Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2021. It was longlisted for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, and was a finalist for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. In France, it won the Prix Litteraire Lucien Barriere, was a finalist for the Grand Prix de l’Heroine, and was longlisted for the Prix Fragonard. Her third novel, A Separation, was a finalist for the Premio von Rezzori and a New York Times Notable Book. Her two previous novels, Gone To The Forest and The Longshot, were both finalists for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award. 

Her work has been translated into 27 languages and is being adapted for film and television. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Rome Prize in Literature, a Cullman Center Fellowship, as well as fellowships from the Lannan, Santa Maddalena, and Jan Michalski foundations. Katie has written for publications including The New York Times Book Review, Harper’s, The Guardian, BOMB, Triple Canopy, and Frieze. She teaches in the creative writing program at New York University.