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Authorlink Audio Interview
With Mischa Berlinski
author of Fieldwork
Audio Length: 14 min.

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An Authorlink Exclusive AUDIO Interview with Mischa Berlinski
Author of Fieldwork, winner of the 2008 Whiting Award for Fiction
December 2008

While working in Thailand as a journalist, Mischa Berlinski began to write a history of the Lisu people's conversion to Christianity, but when he had trouble selling the work as nonfiction, he decided to turn the manuscript into fiction. The project became his debut novel, Fieldwork (FSG, 2007). Set in Thailand, Fieldwork was a finalist for the 2007 National Book Award and recently won the 2008 Whiting Award for fiction.

Born in New York, Berlinski studied classics at Berkeley and Columbia. Until recently, he has lived in Italy, but is now in Haiti, where his wife is a lawyer with the United Nations Peacekeeping Mission. He is working on a new novel, to be published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2011, entitled Peacekeeping.

In this AUDIO interview with Authorlink, Mischa provides a closer look at how he developed his award-winning novel.

Each year, the Whiting Foundation recognizes ten authors with extraordinary promise with cash awards of $50,000 each. For more information click www.whitingfoundation.org