Writers' Workshop Professor Marilynne Robinson's novel a National Book Award finalist

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Marilynne Robinson

University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop faculty member Marilynne Robinson’s newest novel, Lila, was shortlisted for the 2014 National Book Award.

Robinson teaches creative writing at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, part of the UI College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. Lila is her third novel set in the fictional Iowa town of Gilead. The first, Gilead, a fictional autobiography of Reverend John Ames, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005. Home, a concurrent story of the family of Reverend Robert Boughton, was a National Book Award finalist and won the 2009 Orange Prize for Fiction.

Lila’s title character is an abandoned and neglected child who eventually found her way to Gilead and married Reverend James Ames, Gilead’s protagonist.

Robinson is also the author of another novel, Housekeeping, and four books of nonfiction.


The University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences offers about 70 majors across the humanities; fine, performing and literary arts; natural and mathematical sciences; social and behavioral sciences; and communication disciplines. About 15,000 undergraduate and nearly 2,000 graduate students study each year in the college’s 37 departments, led by faculty at the forefront of teaching and research in their disciplines. The college teaches all Iowa undergraduates through the college's general education program, CLAS CORE. About 80 percent of all Iowa undergraduates begin their academic journey in CLAS. The college confers about 60 percent of the university's bachelor's degrees each academic year.