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“Monsters is extraordinary—engaging, enraging, provocative, and brilliant. It’s like a long conversation with your smartest friend. I am buying this book for everyone I know.”—Ann Patchett, author of Tom Lake and Bel Canto

The 2025 Chowdhury Prize in Literature will be presented to critically acclaimed memoirist, essayist, and critic Claire Dederer. Following the presentation, Dederer will participate in an illuminating conversation with award-winning author and USC Distinguished Professor of English Maggie Nelson.

Claire Dederer is the author of the national bestseller Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma, which was a New York Times Notable Book and was named a best book of 2023 by The New Yorker, The Washington Post, Fresh Air, Esquire, The Sunday Times, and many others. Her books include the critically acclaimed memoir Love and Trouble: A Midlife Reckoning and Poser, which was a New York Times bestseller. Dederer is a longtime contributor to The New York Times. Her writing has also appeared in The Paris Review, The Guardian, New York magazine, The Nation, The Atlantic, Vogue, and many other publications. She is a recipient of the Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Writing, a Lannon Foundation residency, and a Hedgebrook residency. She began her career as the chief film critic for Seattle Weekly. She lives in Seattle.

Maggie Nelson is the author of several acclaimed books of poetry and prose, many of which have become cult classics defying categorization. Her nonfiction titles include Pathemata, Or, The Story of My Mouth, Like Love: Essays and Conversations, the national bestseller On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint, the National Book Critics Circle Award winner and New York Times bestseller The Argonauts, The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning (a New York Times Notable Book of the Year), and Bluets (named by Bookforum as one of the top 10 best books of the past 20 years). Her poetry titles include Something Bright, Then Holes and Jane: A Murder. A recipient of numerous awards, including a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship in Nonfiction, she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2019.

Presented by the USC Department of English in partnership with the Subir and Malini Chowdhury Foundation and USC Visions and Voices. Co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities.