How Does Any Of Us Get Through? Sigrid Nunez on Living, Dying, Friendship and Solitude

Sigrid Nunez is the author of seven novels and a memoir. Sigrid's 2018 novel, The Friend, won The National Book Award for fiction and became a bestseller. That book featured a unnamed narrator caring for the dog of a close friend who had committed suicide. This fall she has a new novel out, What Are You Going Through? It's also about a friendship, this time between the narrator and an old acquaintance who's facing terminal cancer and has asked the narrator to be with her as she lives her final days before taking drugs to end her own life. Sigrid spoke with Meghan about this work as well as her past work, not only The Friend but also Salvation City, a novel she published a decade ago about a global flu pandemic. She also talked about her relationship with the late Susan Sontag, with whom she lived while in a relationship with Sontag's son and who was the subject of her 2014 memoir, Sempre Susan.   Guest Bio: Sigrid Nunez is the author of the novels Salvation City, The Last of Her Kind, A Feather on the Breath of God, For Rouenna, and the National Book Award-winning The Friend, among others. She is also the author of Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag. She has been the recipient of several awards, including a Whiting Award, the Rome Prize in Literature, and a Berlin Prize Fellowship. She lives in New York City.