Books
7 Authors Who Never Had a Sophomore Slump
Becoming an author is hard. Becoming a successful author is even harder. And keeping that success? It takes dedication, talent, and a whole lot of good luck and better timing. Despite that, it seems there are some superhuman authors among us who publish one wildly popular or critically acclaimed (or both!) novel after another. They're authors like Paul Harding, who wrote the Pulitzer Prize — and PEN/Robert Bingham W. Prize-winning novel Tinkers – and then publish Enon to critical acclaim just a few years later. As Miley says: They can't stop, they won't stop.
Becoming an author is hard. Becoming a successful author is even harder. And keeping that success? It takes dedication, talent, and a whole lot of good luck and better timing. Despite that, it seems there are some superhuman authors among us who publish one wildly popular or critically acclaimed (or both!) novel after another. They're authors like Paul Harding, who wrote the Pulitzer Prize — and PEN/Robert Bingham W. Prize-winning novel Tinkers – and then publish Enon to critical acclaim just a few years later. As Miley says: They can't stop, they won't stop.
Hilary Mantel
Mantel is an undeniable powerhouse. Her first Thomas Cromwell novel, Wolf Hall, won the Man Booker prize for international fiction in 2009. Not content with just one Man Booker, she published the second novel in the series, Bring Up The Bodies three years later, and won that year's prize, too. Casual.
David Sedaris
Okay, David Sedaris, we get it. You published five uproariously hilarious essay collections in ten years and all of them were NYT Bestsellers. What's that? In 2001 Me Talk Pretty One Day won you a Thurber, and TIME named you "Humorist of the Year"? Oh, you were also nominated for a Grammy in 2004 for the audiobook of Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim? No big deal or anything.
Jhumpa Lahiri
As soon as Lahiri's The Interpreter of Maladies was published in 1999, she hit the ground running. The collection of short stories won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. He second short story collection The Unaccustomed Earth debuted at number one on the NYT bestseller list, and Lahiri was short-listed for the Man Booker prize for her novel The Lowland. (Oh, yeah, and Kal Penn starred in the movie adaptation of her first novel, The Namesake.)
Fiona Maazel
When Maazel came out with Last Last Chance in 2008, the success of the novel got her named as one of the National Book Foundation's "5 Under 35". Woke Up Lonely, published in April of this year was one of The Millions' Most Anticipated Books of 2013 — and it delivered. The story of a cult leader and a spy has since been surpassing expectations left and right.
George Saunders
Saunders is known for writing short stories and novellas, but it definitely doesn't stop him from racking up honors like nobody's business. When your first book (a novella) gets Ben Stiller to buy the film rights, your second book (a collection of short stories) features four O. Henry prizewinning shorts, and your second book of short stories grants you a $500,000 MacArthur Fellowship, a Story Prize, and a PEN/Malamud award.... well, who needs a full-length novel?
Khaled Hosseini
Hosseini's first novel, The Kite Runner didn't find success until it was published in paperback, but then the book club circuit got a hold of it, putting it on the NYT bestseller list (where it stayed for two years). No to be outdone, his next novel A Thousand Splendid Suns was number one for 15 weeks.
