Part of Series
The Why I Write series is based on the Windham-Campbell Lectures, delivered annually to commemorate the awarding of the Donald Windham–Sandy M. Campbell Literature Prizes at Yale University. Administered by Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the series publishes works based on the lecture given by the event’s keynote speaker. The series launched in 2017 with the release of Devotion, by renowned musician, artist, and author Patti Smith. This new volume is by internationally best-selling author Karl Ove Knausgaard, and future editions will come from Pulitzer Prize winner Hilton Als and poet-playwright Elizabeth Alexander, who recited her poetry at the 2009 presidential inauguration of Barack Obama.
Author
Nominated to the 2004 Nordic Council’s Literature Prize & awarded the 2004 Norwegian Critics’ Prize. Karl Ove Knausgård (b. 1968) made his literary debut in 1998 with the widely acclaimed novel Out of the World, which was a great critical and commercial success and won him, as the first debut novel ever, The Norwegian Critics' Prize. He then went on to write six autobiographical novels, titled My Struggle (Min Kamp), which have become a publication phenomenon in his native Norway as well as the world over.
