As she watched the process unfold, Ma started thinking about the meaning and nature of work.

The seed for the novel started germinating when Ma worked at a company that was downsizing and eventually closed its Chicago office. “It was a very inspiring time, and I felt like I could see connections between all the disciplines I studied.” That sense of interdisciplinary creativity came to life in Severance. “I took workshops on poetry, fiction, and performance arts, as well as many film courses,” Ma said. Ma remembers her years at UChicago as fundamental to her development as a writer. “I’m working from home and watching the news like anyone else.”Ĭritically praised and widely read, Severance won the 2020 Whiting Award, the 2018 Kirkus Prize, and the 2019 Young Lions Fiction Award, as well as spots on best-of lists in the New York Times and NPR.

“I never predicted what’s happening now,” she said. Ma’s work earned critical acclaim, and now has won her one of the country’s largest literary award for emerging writers.įor Ma, the reality of the COVID-19 outbreak is even wilder and weirder than her fiction. And how the media metabolizes larger-than-life events, trying to create a narrative for us in real time.”Ī post-apocalyptic satire, Severance used the fictional “Shen Fever” to both skewer capitalism and reframe the immigration narrative of its Asian-American protagonist. “I thought about my jobs, how people interact in the workplace and the power hierarchies. “I thought about how companies would react when these catastrophes happened,” said Ma, AB’05, an assistant professor of practice in the arts in the University of Chicago’s Program in Creative Writing. Published in 2018, Severance was inspired by emergencies of a lesser scale: the 2002 SARS epidemic, Hurricane Sandy, and the 2011 snowpocalypse that closed Chicago businesses and schools.

CDT hosted by the Department of English Language and Literature and the Program in Creative Writing. In an online conversation anchored by her novel, Ma and Paola Del Toro (AB’20), will discuss “The President Told Us All to Go Shopping” on June 11 at 6 p.m.

Ling Ma’s award-winning debut novel about an epidemic, Severance, has found new resonance amid the coronavirus outbreak.

Severance book ling ma