Discipline: Literature – fiction

Sandra Newman

Discipline: Literature – fiction
Region: New York, NY
MacDowell Fellowships: 2014

Sandra Newman’s first novel, The Only Good Thing Anyone Has Ever Done, was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. Her second novel, Cake, was published by Chatto in 2007. In 2009 she co-wrote How NOT to Write a Novel and followed that with a memoir, Changeling, in 2010. In residence at MacDowell she was working on a two-novel project, a dystopian work of fiction written in an invented future patois. The first book of the series, The Country of Ice Cream Star, her third novel, was published in 2014 and nominated for the 2015 Folio Prize and the 2015 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction. The Heavens was published in 2019, The Men in 2022, with Julia, Sandra’s feminist retelling of George Orwell’s dystopian classic, 1984, following in 2023.

Studios

MacDowell

Sandra Newman worked in the MacDowell studio.

Built in 1912, Pine Studio was renamed MacDowell Studio in 1943 in recognition of support from a group of Edward MacDowell’s music students. It was built as a composers’ studio and the stuccoed walls were intended to be soundproof. Like many of the studios on property, MacDowell was winterized in the 1950s when the program began welcoming…

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