What To Read

Great Expectations, the debut coming-of-age novel from New Yorker staff writer and critic Vinson Cunningham, examines how a young Black man's life is transformed while working on a Senator's campaign to become the first Black president. A starred review in Booklist called this book an "electrifying first novel and bildungsroman of consummate artistry and sensitivity, honed vision and wit.”

As part of our First Dibs Editors Salon on February 13, we will provide Tertulia members with an advance preview of Great Expectations, along with a few other notable forthcoming books, in an exclusive event featuring the editors who brought them to life. Learn more.

The acquiring editor of the book, David Ebershoff (Vice President and Editor-in-Chief of Hogarth), shared this personal note with us about the book just for Tertulia readers.

Great Expectations by Vinson Cunningham (March 12)

 A note from David Ebershoff (Vice President and Editor-in-Chief at Hogarth)

If you read The New Yorker, you might be familiar with the work of Vinson Cunningham. As a staff writer and theatre critic, Vinson has written about a wide range of American subjects, including Tracy Morgan, Lorraine Hansberry, Thomas Jefferson’s Bible, basketball, and a favorite book of African American hymns. If you listen to podcasts, you might recognize his warm and wise voice— he co-hosts The New Yorker’s podcast “Critics at Large” and has guest-hosted “The New Yorker Radio Hour.”

 Before Vinson was a journalist, he worked in the Obama White House, and before that, when he was a very young man, he was a staffer on Obama's first presidential campaign. That experience has inspired Vinson’s remarkable debut novel, Great Expectations, which National Book Award-winning author Colum McCann says “will be one of the talked-about novels of the year.”

 But Great Expectations isn’t a roman à clef, or an insider-y novel of politics. Rather it's a beautifully rendered coming-of-age story and a novel of ideas about David, a young Black man seeking to understand his country as he observes a Senator from Illinois campaigning to become the nation's first Black president. Great Expectations is literary fiction about one young man and his country as he works at the outer, outer edges of the inner circle of American political power. Bryan Washington, author of Memorial, calls it “a phenomenal, transfixing work.” And I enthusiastically agree with Raven Leilani, author of Luster, when she says, “I always look forward to reading Vinson’s work.”

 – David Ebershoff is Vice President and Editor-in-Chief at Hogarth