Benjamin Kunkel


Benjamin Kunkel is an American novelist and political economist. He co-founded and is a co-editor of the journal n+1. His novel, Indecision, was published in 2005.

Background and education

Kunkel grew up in Eagle, Colorado, and was educated at St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire; Kunkel studied at Deep Springs College in California, graduated with an A.B. from Harvard University, and received his MFA in Creative Writing at Columbia University.

Career

In addition to regularly writing for The New York Times, Kunkel has written for the magazines Dissent, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, The London Review of Books, The Believer, and The New Yorker. Kunkel has written multiple short stories and book reviews for the print journal he started with friends from college and graduate school, n+1. In the Fall 2004 issue, he published the short story "Horse Mountain," about an aging man. In the Spring 2005 issue, he published a review of J.M. Coetzee's works, imitating Coetzee's recent novel Elizabeth Costello. In the Fall 2005 issue, he published a short story "Or Things I Did Not Do or Say," about a man determined to kill another man.
Much of Kunkel's work exhibits a preoccupation with global social justice and leftist politics, including the Marxist overview Utopia or Bust: A Guide to the Present Crisis, the Kirchner essay Argentinidad, and the anti-capitalist book The Commonist Manifesto.

''Indecision''

Indecision was published by Random House in 2005. Indecision begins with the acknowledgment, "For n+1." Kunkel has described the critically acclaimed novel as "overpraised."

Writings and interviews

Archives of his articles for other magazines
Reviews
Interviews and reading