Hanya Yanagihara (born September 20, 1974) is an American novelist and travel writer. She grew up in Hawaii.
Yanagihara's A Little Life was published in March 2015, again receiving predominantly favorable reviews, and defying expectations by its editor, Yanagihara's agent, and the author herself that it would not sell well. One notable exception was Daniel Mendelsohn for The New York Review of Books, who sharply critiqued A Little Life′s technical execution, its depictions of violence, which Mendelsohn found ethically and aesthetically gratuitous, and its position with respect to the representation of queer life or issues by a presumed-heterosexual author. Mendelsohn's review prompted a response from Gerald Howard, the book's publisher, in a letter to which Mendelsohn responded in turn. On September 15, 2015, the book was shortlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize for fiction. Yanagihara was also selected as a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award in Fiction for A Little Life.
