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.