Ayşegül Savaş is a Turkish writer who writes in English.
Education and influences She was raised in Turkey and Denmark, then attended Middlebury College in Vermont. She graduated in 2007. She worked as a staff writer on The Middlebury Campus, writing often for the paper's arts section. She majored in sociology and anthropology. During her years at Middlebury she studied abroad in Russia (Yaroslavl) and France (Paris). She received an MFA at the University of San Francisco.
Among authors who have influenced her, she names Patrick Modiano, and Enrique Vila-Matas.
Novels Her first novel was Walking on the Ceiling (2019), published by Riverhead Books. A reviewer in Booklist called it "deceptively simple and subtly profound." The second, published by the same publishing house, is titled White on White (2021). Anthony Cummins of The Guardian reviewed it favorably, noting that the writing style in the book is like austere painting. Her third novel, The Anthropologists (2024), was published by Bloomsbury, and was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award. It was a New York Times editor's choice, one of the best books of the year by The New Yorker, TIME Magazine, Publishers Weekly, and best book of 2024 according to Vulture (New York magazine).
Short fiction and essays She has published short stories and essays in publications that include The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Yale Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Literary Hub, Granta, and The Dublin Review among others.
Long Distance: Stories was longlisted for the 2025 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction.Retrieved 2026-05-05.
Non-fiction In 2024, Savaş published a non-fiction work, titled The Wilderness about the first 40 days of the postpartum and the mythology surrounding this period.
Bibliography
Novels
Short fiction Collections
StoriesShort stories unless otherwise noted. TitleYearFirst publishedReprinted/collectedNotesFuture selves2021
Non-fiction
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References
External links Savas' Homepage "Ayşegül Savaş on Desire and Disappointment"; interview with Cressida Leyshon in The New Yorker (January 24, 2022) "Author Ayşegül Savaş on The Anthropologists & Her Writing Career"; interview with Jana M. Perkins in Women of Letters (October 15, 2024)