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Peter Orner

Goodreads Author

Born

Chicago IL, The United States

Website

http://www.peterorner.net/

Twitter

peter_orner

Genre

Literature & Fiction, Nonfiction, Short Stories

Member Since

November 2011

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Peter Orner was born in Chicago and is the author of three novels: Esther Stories (Houghton Mifflin, 2001), The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo (Little, Brown, 2006), and his most recent, Love and Shame and Love (Little, Brown, 2011) which was recently called epic by Daniel Handler, "...epic like Gilgamesh, epic like a guitar solo." (Orner has since bought Gilgamesh and is enjoying it.) Love and Shame and Love is illustrated throughout by his brother Eric Orner, a comic artist and illustrator whose long time independent/alt weekly strip The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green was made into a feature film in 2008. Eric Orner's work is featured this year in Best American Cartoons edited by Alison Bechdel.

A film version of one of O Peter Orner was born in Chicago and is the author of three novels: Esther Stories (Houghton Mifflin, 2001), The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo (Little, Brown, 2006), and his most recent, Love and Shame and Love (Little, Brown, 2011) which was recently called epic by Daniel Handler, "...epic like Gilgamesh, epic like a guitar solo." (Orner has since bought Gilgamesh and is enjoying it.) Love and Shame and Love is illustrated throughout by his brother Eric Orner, a comic artist and illustrator whose long time independent/alt weekly strip The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green was made into a feature film in 2008. Eric Orner's work is featured this year in Best American Cartoons edited by Alison Bechdel.

A film version of one of Orner's stories, The Raft, is currently in production and stars Ed Asner.

The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo, a Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and a San Francisco Chronicle Best-Seller, won the Bard Fiction Prize. The novel is being translated into French, Dutch, Italian, and German. The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo is set in Namibia where Orner lived and worked in the early 1990's.

Esther Stories was awarded the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Goldberg Prize for Jewish Fiction, and was a Finalist for the Pen Hemingway Award and the New York Public Library's Young Lions Award.

Orner is also the editor of two non-fiction books, Underground America (2008) and Hope Deferred: Narratives of Zimbabwean Lives (co-editor Annie Holmes, 2010), both published by McSweeney's/ Voice of Witness, an imprint devoted to using oral history to illuminate human rights crises around the world. Harper's Magazine wrote, "Hope Deferred might be the most important publication out of Zimbabwe in the past thirty years."

Orner has published fiction in the Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, McSweeney's, The Southern Review, and various other publications. Stories have been anthologized in Best American Stories and the Pushcart Prize Annual. Orner has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim and Lannan Foundations.

Orner has taught at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop (Visiting Professor, 2011), University of Montana (William Kittredge Visting Writer, 2009), the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College (2009) Washington University (Visiting Hurst Professor, 2008), Bard College (Bard Fiction Prize Fellowship, 2007), Miami University (Visting Professor, 2002), Charles University in Prague (Visting Law Faculty, 2000). Orner is a long time permanent faculty member at San Francisco State where he is an associate professor. He would like to divide his time between a lot of places, especially San Francisco and Chicago. ...more

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Peter Orner’s books

Average rating: 3.84 · 4,769 ratings · 953 reviews · 39 distinct works • Similar authors

	Am I Alone Here?: Notes on Living to Read and Reading to Live 3.95 avg rating — 1,068 ratings — published 2016 — 11 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Love and Shame and Love 3.37 avg rating — 673 ratings — published 2011 — 14 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Esther Stories 4.11 avg rating — 438 ratings — published 2001 — 15 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Maggie Brown & Others: Stories 3.80 avg rating — 454 ratings — published 2019 — 9 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Underground America: Narratives of Undocumented Lives by Peter Orner (Goodreads Author) (Editor & Compiler), Annie Holmes (Goodreads Author) (Editor), Tom Andes (Editor) 4.29 avg rating — 360 ratings — published 2008 — 11 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge: Stories 3.65 avg rating — 417 ratings — published 2013 — 11 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo 3.72 avg rating — 402 ratings — published 2006 — 20 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Still No Word from You: Notes in the Margin 3.95 avg rating — 310 ratings — published 2022 — 9 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Gossip Columnist's Daughter 3.40 avg rating — 161 ratings — published 2025 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Hope Deferred: Narratives of Zimbabwean Lives by Peter Orner (Goodreads Author) (Editor), Annie Holmes (Goodreads Author) (Editor) 4.41 avg rating — 51 ratings — published 2010 — 7 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Quotes by Peter Orner (?)

“Chicago does not go to the world, the world comes to Chicago! Who needs New York? Who has taller buildings than our tall buildings? Who's got a busier airport than our airport? You want Picasso? We got Picasso, big Picasso. Nobody can make heads or tails of it. It's a lion? No, a seahorse. Looks to me like a radiator with wings. Who gives a damn, people, a Picasso's a Picasso.”
― Peter Orner, Love and Shame and Love

tags: chicago, city, picasso

7 likes

“Yeah, I want to retreat from the world and ponder in solitude. At the same time I wouldn’t mind at least a couple of people pondering my whereabouts.”
― Peter Orner, Am I Alone Here?: Notes on Living to Read and Reading to Live

tags: solitude, vanishing

2 likes

“The lake is always east. East is always the lake. Anywhere else he's ever been he never knows where he is.”
― Peter Orner, Love and Shame and Love

2 likes

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Polls

What will be our April 2021 Open Pick?

Remember, if you vote for a book and it wins, you are implicitly promising to read the book and participate in the discussion.

The poll will end at 11:59 pm on March 2nd. The discussion will start on April 1st

The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo by Peter Orner

4 votes, 36.4%

Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue

3 votes, 27.3%

The Sorrows of an American by Siri Hustvedt

3 votes, 27.3%

Such Small Hands by Andrés Barba

1 vote, 9.1%

11 total votes

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