Acclaimed writer Jonathan Safran Foer is the author of several works of fiction. His recent works include the Extemely Loud and Incredibly Close (Houghton Mifflin, 2005), a novel about an experience of the September 11 attacks in New York; and "A Beginner's Guide to Hanukkah" (New York Times, 22 December 2005), a humorous short fiction piece. His first novel, Everything is Illuminated (Houghton Mifflin, 2002), won the National Jewish Book Award, the Guardian First Book Award, and the York Public Library Young Lions Prize, and was named Book of the Year by the Los Angeles Times. He edited and contributed to the collection A Convergence of Birds: Original Fiction and Poetry Inspired by the Work of Joseph Cornell (D.A.P., 2001). Foer holds a BA in philosophy and literature from Princeton University, where he won the freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior thesis creative writing prizes. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Conjunctions, and the Paris Review. His honors include the Zeotrope: All-Story Fiction Prize and a Bronfman Fellowship. At the Academy, Foer will work on a new English version of the Haggadah, the Jewish text that contains the order of the Passover holiday Seder and that performs a "telling" of the Israelites' liberation from slavery in Egypt.