This was a live edited interview between Karissa Geisinger and Jennifer Egan, conducted on March 5th, 2026.

Jennifer Egan is a Brooklyn-based novelist and journalist. Her 2010 novel, A Visit from the Goon Squad, won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was listed on the “100 Best Books of the 21st Century” in the New York Times. Her most recent novel, The Candy House, a companion to A Visit from the Goon Squad, was one of the New York Times‘s “10 Best Books of 2022.” She recently spent a year writing on street homelessness and supportive housing for The New Yorker. Egan has taught literature at the University of Pennsylvania and served as President of PEN America from 2018 to 2020.

M&L: What is your favourite virtue?

JE: I think generosity.

M&L: What are your favourite qualities in other people?

JE: Curiosity. Passion. Kindness.

M&L: What is your chief characteristic?

JE: I think it’s hard for us to answer that about ourselves. My chief characteristic? I don’t know if people have chief characteristics. I have to push back on that one. That seems like one of those things that people say about other people, but I don’t know if it’s ever really true. It’s a bit of a construct.

M&L: What do you appreciate the most in your friends?

JE: They’re all very different from each other. Maybe consistency. Now that it’s been a long time since I met a lot of my friends in school, it’s very meaningful to have remained friends for so long.

M&L: What is your main fault?

JE: Impatience. There are a lot of things that are really bad about being impatient. It sounds like a minor flaw, but it’s a problem.

M&L: What is your favourite occupation?

JE: That’s a good question. I would say writing.

M&L: What is your idea of happiness?

JE: I think feeling loved and in the moment.

M&L: What is your idea of misery?

JE: Feeling at war with myself.

M&L: If not yourself, who would you be?

JE: Meaning another [pre-]existing person? I have trouble answering that because—in a way—my job is to imagine myself being so many different people that I don’t think I have a favourite. I mean, it might be interesting to be Taylor Swift, briefly. She fascinates me. She fascinates me because she’s led such a hot-house, flower life, and yet she seems to be a normal person.

M&L: Where would you like to live?

JE: I love where I live. I love New York. I live where I want to live.

M&L: What is your favourite colour and flower?

JE: Blue. And I kind of change on the flowers […] I’m going to say a Mexican sunflower, because I’m trying to create a monarch butterfly habitat. And monarchs love them. And then I’m growing milkweed to try to get them to breed on the milkweed. It has not all come together yet, I should just say.

M&L: What is your favourite bird?

JE: Tufted titmouse. So cute! I just bought a tiny, little tufted titmouse birdhouse, and I’m hoping that they’ll breed in my birdhouse. I live in Brooklyn, New York, so this is, like, not a rural environment where I am. But it’s amazing how much life is there!

M&L: Who are your favourite living prose authors?

JE: That’s tough. It’s really difficult, actually. I’m just going to mention a couple of people that I think are worth reading who are writing now. I think Lauren Groff is great. Yeah, she’s really good. My friend James Hannaham is a fantastic writer. I want him to get more attention. There’s so many people I want to read and haven’t read enough of. I think Don DeLillo is one of the greats. I really love his work. Michael Pollan is a wonderful journalist, sort of science writer. I sort of could meander on endlessly, maybe I’ll stop there.

M&L: Who are your favourite poets?

JE: Shakespeare. I love epic poetry. I will just say that. So, I’ll say, like, [Lord] Byron. Pushkin. Ovid. I just love storytelling in poetry. I find it irresistible.

M&L: Who are your heroes in fiction?

JE: Shakespeare. Edith Wharton. Ralph Ellison. Toni Morrison. Don DeLillo. George Elliot. Actually, I’m going to say, also, Samuel Richardson. Clarissa, [the] longest novel written in English, which I actually read fairly recently… incredible. So brutal and good. The fact that in the eighteenth century he [Samuel Richardson] was writing as a woman so effectively is really impressive.

M&L: Who are your favourite painters and composers?

JE: Painters: Cézanne. I love Cézanne. I mean, there’s, again, so many. Composers: Chopin. Love him. Bach. And also more modern: Steve Reich. I’m thinking again about painters: I love Frans Hals.

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