Gish Jen is the author of five novels, two collections of short stories, and two non-fiction books. Her most recent works include the 2020 novel The Resisters and the 2022 short story collection Thank You, Mr. Nixon. Her new novel Bad Bad Girl will be published in October 2025. Five of her stories have been selected for volumes of the Best American Short Stories and her story “Birthmates” was selected by John Updike for The Best American Short Stories of the Century. This spring she will be inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. 

Alice McDermott is the author of nine novels and a book of non-fiction. Her most recent books are her 2024 novel Absolution and What About the Baby?, her 2021 collection of essays. Her 1998 novel Charming Billy won the National Book Award and the American Book Award; her 2017 novel The Ninth Hour won the Prix Femina étranger; and Absolution won the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award. In 2010 she received the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Excellence in American Literature.

Chapter 9 finds Nick Carraway meditating on the tragedy of Jay Gatsby's fabulist career and all-too-real death. Fearing scandal, the partygoers who once flooded West Egg are nowhere to be found when Gatsby is buried. Not even Meyer Wolfshiem makes an appearance, and Daisy never calls. As Nick considers these betrayals, he offers some of the novel's most famous lines, including the beautiful passage on the Midwest; Nick's indictment of Tom and Daisy as careless people; and, of course, the novel's rapturously melancholy ending, which captures the conundrum of American optimism and guileless faith in promise in the beautiful image of boats riding against the currents of time.  

Francine Prose is the author of twenty novels, three collections of short stories, eleven non-fiction books, and a children’s book. Her most recent books include her 2021 novel The Vixen and 1974: A Personal History, published in 2024. Her 1973 novel Judah the Pious won the National Jewish Book Award; her 1983 novel Hungry Hearts won the Edward Lewis Wallant Award; and her 2005 novel A Changed Man won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. In 1988 she received the PEN Translation Prize.

Chapter 8 is the novel's shortest but in many ways most intense. After Myrtle Wilson's agonizing death, Jay Gatsby weighs whether Daisy Buchanan will actually leave her husband. The novel includes one final flashback to the couple's 1917 romance detailing Gatsby's bewitchment. Meanwhile, the enraged widower George Wilson plots revenge on the driver of the yellow car that mowed down his wife.  

Kim Stanley Robinson is, according to The New Yorker, “generally acknowledged as one of the greatest living science-fiction writers.” He is the author of more than twenty novels, including the Orange County Trilogy, the Mars Trilogy, and the Science in the Capital Series. His 2020 novel The Ministry for the Future won the Best Foreign Novel award at the 2024 Grand Prix L’Imaginaire, honoring the best fiction or science fiction book published in France in 2023. His most recent book is The High Sierra: A Love Story (2022).

Maxine Hong Kingston’s 1976 memoir The Woman Warrior won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. Her 1980 non-fiction book China Men won the National Book Award; her 1989 novel Tripmaster Monkey won the PEN West Award; and her 2006 anthology Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace won the Northern California Book Award Special Award in Publishing. In 1997, she was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Bill Clinton, and in 2014 President Barack Obama awarded her the National Medal of Arts. 

Chapter 7 finds the rising drama of Jay Gatsby's quest to prove himself worthy of East Egg explode as the cuckolded Tom Buchanan outs our mysteriously ostentatious man of wealth as "Mr. Nobody from Nowhere." After a clash at the Plaza Hotel, Nick and company are complicit in the shocking demise of Myrtle Wilson, mowed down by a "death car" under the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg. As Nick realizes, Gatsby faces a moment of doubt in his ability to realize the special destiny he believes he deserves. 

Richard Russo is the author of ten novels, three collections of short stories, and two books of non-fiction. His most recent book is his 2023 novel Somebody’s Fool. Life and Art, a collection of his essays, will be published in May 2025. His 2001 novel Empire Falls won the Pulitzer Prize and his story “Horseman” was included in the 2007 volume of The Best American Short Stories. 

In 2017 he received France’s Grand Prix de Littérature Américaine; and in 2018 he received the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Achievement in American Literature. He wrote the teleplay for the HBO adaptation of Empire Falls; and he has written or co-written the screenplays for several films. His 1997 novel Straight Man was adapted into the 2023 TV series Lucky Hank. 

As the reignited affair between Gatsby and Daisy sparks rumors in West Egg, chapter 6 of Gatsby finds narrator Nick Carraway revealing to readers the origin story of Long Island's mysterious millionaire. Tension mounts when Tom Buchanan shows up to Gatsby's mansion one day. Tom and Daisy subsequently attend one of Gatsby's parties, and the man who has dedicated the last five years of his life to winning Daisy back doubts whether he can recapture her. The chapter ends with one of the most beautiful passages in American literature that captures both Fitzgerald's and Gatsby's gossamer romanticism.  

Robert Olen Butler is the author of sixteen novels, six short story collections, and a non-fiction book on The Process of Writing Fiction; his most recent book is his 2021 novel Late City, with his new novel Twice Around a Marriage scheduled for Fall 2025 publication. 

His 1992 short story collection A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain won the Pulitzer Prize. His short stories have received two Pushcart Prizes and have been reprinted in four annual volumes of The Best American Short Stories and in eight annual editions of New Stories from the South and have won two National Magazine Awards. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. 

In chapter 5 of The Great Gatsby the hero finally reunites with his former lover, Daisy Buchanan, after five years. Narrator Nick Carraway watches in amazement as Gatsby goes from a nervous, anxious "mooncalf" into a suave romantic who impresses Daisy with his custom-made shirts. As the centerpiece of Gatsby, chapter 5 makes us question whether Gatsby's dream of winning back Daisy might just come true. 

Joseph O’Neill is the author of five novels, a collection of short stories, and a family history. His most recent book is the 2024 novel Godwin. His 2008 novel Netherland won the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award. Two of his short stories have won O. Henry Prizes and his stories have been widely anthologized. 

His fiction and cultural criticism has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Atlantic, New York Magazine, and Granta. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Born in Ireland, he grew up in Mozambique, Iran, Turkey, and the Netherlands. 

Chapter 4 of The Great Gatsby find narrator Nick Carraway tentatively learning about Jay Gatsby's shady background through a meeting with the notorious gambler Meyer Wolfshiem. Nick is both amazed and amused by Gatsby's prodigious lies about his background as they motor into New York City, crossing the Queensboro Bridge in a famous scene that captures the upheaval of the Jazz Age. After the meeting Nick learns from Jordan Baker the actual connection between Gatsby and Daisy Fay.

Ann Beattie is the author of nine novels, twelve collections of short stories, a children’s book, and two non-fiction books. Her most recent publications are the 2023 short story collection Onlookers and More to Say: Essays and Appreciations, also published in 2023. 

Her short stories have appeared in five O. Henry Prize collections, in The Best American Short Stories and in The Best American Short Stories of the Century. She has received the PEN/Malamud Award for excellence in the art of the short story and the Rea Award for the Short Story. She is a member of the Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. A graduate of American University and the University of Connecticut, she has taught at Harvard, the University of Connecticut, and for many years at the University of Virginia.

Chapter 3 of The Great Gatsby is a tour-de-force depiction of one of Jay Gatsby's frenetic parties. Here Nick Carraway finally meets his next-door neighbor and discovers a surprising connection with him involving the Great War. As Nick embarks on a relationship with Jordan Baker we are introduced to one of  the novel's central metaphors of the "careless driver."

Jane Smiley is the author of seventeen novels, two collections of short stories, five books of non-fiction, eight young adult novels, and a children’s book. Her most recent book is her 2024 novel, Lucky. She has won three O. Henry Awards for her short fiction. 

In 1981, she received the Friends of American Writers Prize for her novel At Paradise Gate; in 1992, she received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Heartland Award for her novel, A Thousand Acres; and in 2006 she received the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Achievement in American Literature at the F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Festival and the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award. She was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2001. 

Chapter 2 of The Great Gatsby finds narrator Nick Carraway trapped in a claustrophobic rendezvous between Tom Buchanan and his mistress, Myrtle Wilson, the wife of a lowly Queens gas-station owner near the Valley of Ashes. At the adulterous couples' Washington Heights love nest on 158th St, Nick meets a group of gauche wannabes: Myrtle's garish younger sister Catherine; the effete aspiring photographer Chester McKee; and his loud, brash wife Lucille. As Nick admits, the party is only the second time in his life he is drunk, and the party ends in a brutal act of violence. 

Jonathan Franzen is the author of six novels, most recently Crossroads and Purity, and five works of nonfiction, including The Discomfort Zone, Farther Away, and The End of the End of the Earth.

Among his honors are the National Book Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Award, the Heartland Prize, Die Welt Literature Prize, the Budapest Grand Prize, and the first Carlos Fuentes Medal awarded at the Guadalajara International Book Fair. Franzen is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Chapter 1 of The Great Gatsby introduces readers to narrator Nick Carraway, his cousin Daisy Fay Buchanan, her belligerent husband Tom, the reckless golfer Jordan Baker, and, most importantly, to the mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby whose West Egg mansion looks upon a shimmering green light across the wealthiest, most exclusive harbor on Long Island Sound. 

In this inaugural episode of our subseries Worlds of the Imaginary, Troy University freshman Jason Frye and Kirk Curnutt discuss the grandfather of all sci-fi novels: H. G. Wells's The Time Machine, first published in 1895 when its author was still in his twenties. Although not the first-ever time travel adventure (Wells himself had previously published a story called "The Chronic Argonauts"), the story of an unnamed scientist who roars 800,000 years into the future established the template for humanity's desire to rocket around the clock. Our hosts discuss the political symbolism of the two races the traveler encounters, the Eloi and the Morlocks, and why the story includes a love interest, Weena, when there's no love. We also discuss the narrative frame and the killer ending, dropping references to Superman, Planet of the Apes, and other quintessential time travel tales.