George Saunders

George Saunders – Life, Career, and Words That Matter

Explore the life and writing of George Saunders — acclaimed American short story writer, novelist, essayist, and professor. From Tenth of December to Lincoln in the Bardo, uncover his journey, philosophies, famous quotes, and enduring influence.

Introduction

George Saunders (born December 2, 1958) is an American writer whose deeply humane, satirical, and often surreal stories have earned him a place among the most respected contemporary authors. He is known for his capacity to fuse humor, moral urgency, and imaginative experimentation. His novel Lincoln in the Bardo won the Booker Prize in 2017, and his short story collections (especially Tenth of December) have influenced a generation of writers.

Saunders is also a teacher, essayist, and literary thinker, committed to using fiction not merely for aesthetic delight but as a way to deepen empathy and consciousness.

Early Life and Education

George Saunders was born on December 2, 1958, in Amarillo, Texas.

Before turning to writing full-time, Saunders traveled a nontraditional route:

• He earned a B.S. in geophysical engineering from the Colorado School of Mines in 1981.

• He later studied creative writing, completing an M.F.A. at Syracuse University in 1988, where he worked with the writer Tobias Wolff.

Saunders worked in technical and blue-collar jobs—even in roles such as a slaughterhouse “knuckle-puller”—before fully devoting himself to writing.

Career and Achievements

Early Writing & Short Fiction

Saunders began publishing short stories in the mid-1980s. CivilWarLand in Bad Decline (1996), collected stories and a novella; it was lauded as a striking debut.

Over the years, Saunders published several acclaimed story collections: Pastoralia (2000), In Persuasion Nation (2006), Tenth of December (2013), and Liberation Day (2022).

His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, McSweeney’s, GQ, and other venues.

Saunders has also won multiple National Magazine Awards for fiction (in 1994, 1996, 2000, 2004) and placed in the O. Henry Awards.

In 2006 he was awarded both a MacArthur Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship, recognizing both the originality and depth of his writing.

Lincoln in the Bardo and Later Works

Saunders’ first full novel, Lincoln in the Bardo (2017), was a major critical success. It won the Man Booker Prize and brought wider recognition to his work.

His more recent works include Fox 8 (a novella) and Vigil (expected) as well as Liberation Day, expanding his approach to form and voice.

Saunders also wrote nonfiction, such as The Braindead Megaphone, and more recently A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, a craft book rooted in close readings of Russian short stories.

In 2025, he was named to receive the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters by the National Book Foundation.

He holds a faculty position in the creative writing program at Syracuse University.

Historical Milestones & Context

• Saunders’ rise bridges the late-20th-century short story renaissance and the 21st-century novel revival.

• His Tenth of December became emblematic of how stories can blend speculative, surreal elements with emotional realism — influencing many writers and readers.

• Lincoln in the Bardo broke conventional narrative boundaries, using multiple voices, archival fragments, and experimental structure to interrogate grief, mortality, and historical myth.

• His emphasis on moral imagination, empathy, and critique of consumer/corporate culture connects to broader literary and political conversations.

Legacy and Influence

George Saunders is often praised not just for his formal inventiveness but for his moral seriousness. His fiction is frequently described as a kind of “compassion machine”—stories that cultivate empathy and challenge readers’ assumptions.

He has influenced younger writers to take risks — using satire, absurdity, and speculative elements not as gimmicks, but as tools to reveal human truth.

As a teacher and public literary voice, Saunders repeatedly advocates for kindness, generosity, and emotional clarity in writing and in life. His 2013 commencement address at Syracuse, urging graduates to "err in the direction of kindness," has been widely shared and quoted.

The 2025 lifetime achievement medal underscores how Saunders’ work is being recognized not just for individual books, but for sustained contributions to American letters.

Personality, Talents & Philosophies

From his interviews, essays, and speeches, a number of core traits and ideas emerge:

• Curiosity and humility: Even with his success, Saunders often emphasizes uncertainty — embracing confusion as a starting point for creativity.

• Moral urgency in art: He often argues that stories must engage with what matters — not avoid moral questions or reduce them.

• Balancing humor and gravity: Saunders’ voice veers between satire and sincerity, often holding both in tension.

• Empathy as craft: He sees fiction as a way to expand readers’ capacity to see across difference.

• Discomfort as productive: He encourages writers to stay uncomfortable, to disrupt conventions rather than settle into safe patterns.

Famous Quotes of George Saunders

Here are some resonant and representative quotes:

• “Don’t be afraid to be confused. Try to remain permanently confused. Anything is possible. Stay open, forever, so open it hurts, and then open up some more…”

• “Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial.”

• “My heartfelt wish for you: as you get older, your self will diminish and you will grow in love.”

• “The scariest thought in the world is that someday I’ll wake up and realize I’ve been sleepwalking through my life: underappreciating the people I love...”

• “Irony is just honesty with the volume cranked up.”

• “When you read a short story, you come out a little more aware and a little more in love with the world around you. What I want is to have the reader come out just 6 percent more awake to the world.”

These selections reflect his mix of clarity, ethical weight, and imaginative ambition.

Lessons from George Saunders

1. Embrace uncertainty and confusion
   Saunders suggests that clarity often comes after wrestling with ambiguity — creative confidence should not depend on immediate answers.

2. Write with kindness
   His rhetoric consistently returns to compassion — writing is not just technical art, but a moral act.

3. Stay open to transformation
   He encourages evolving, letting stories surprise you, rather than forcing predetermined messages.

4. Blend genres to expand vision
   His use of speculative or strange elements doesn’t degrade realism, but enriches it — offering new lenses on human life.

5. Persist and revise
   Saunders often speaks about hard work, repeated rewriting, and the slow accretion of meaning in stories.

6. Be generous
   His public statements and teaching reflect generosity — believing in readers, other writers, and the possibility that literature can help us live better.

Conclusion

George Saunders is a writer whose significance lies in how he imagines moral and emotional life under pressure: in corporate systems, in grief, in surveillance, in the quotidian corners of modern experience. His blend of formal daring, humor, and ethical seriousness has reshaped expectations for contemporary fiction.