Sarah Churchwell


Sarah Bartlett Churchwell is a professor of American Literature and Public Understanding of the Humanities at the University of London, UK. Her expertise is in 20th- and 21st-century fiction. She has appeared on British television and radio and has been a judge for the Booker Prize, the Women's Prize for Fiction, and the David Cohen Prize for Literature. She is the director of the Being Human festival.

Early life

Churchwell grew up in Winnetka, near Chicago, Illinois. She earned a BA in English Literature from Vassar College and an MA and PhD in English and American Literature from Princeton University.

Career

Churchwell lectured at the University of East Anglia from 1999 until 2015, when she became Professor of American Literature and Public Understanding of the Humanities and director of the Being Human festival at the School of Advanced Study at London University. She has written for The New York Times Book Review, The Times Literary Supplement, The Spectator, the New Statesman, The Guardian and The Observer. Her books include The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe ; and Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby about F. Scott Fitzgerald. Her television appearances include on Newsnight, Question Time, The Review Show, and The Sharp End with Clive Anderson.
Churchwell was a judge for the 2014 Man Booker Prize.
She was Writer in Residence at the Eccles Centre for American Studies in 2015.

Work