Meet the Author: Irina Reyn

at a top New York auction house, is trying to entice Russia’s wealthy oligarchs to bid on the biggest sale of her career, the Order of Saint Catherine, while making sense of the sudden and unexplained departure of her husband. As questions arise over the provenance of the Order, Reyn takes us into the world of Catherine the Great, the infamous eighteenth-century empress who may have owned the priceless artifact, and who it turns out faced many of the same issues Tanya wrestles with in her own life. The novel asks what female ambition means, today and in the past, and whether a marriage can withstand an ambitious wife.
Author Irina Reyn was born in Moscow, and currently divides her time between Pittsburgh and Brooklyn. Her first novel, What Happened to Anna K., was named one of “Ten Best Books of the Year” by Entertainment Weekly, made both San Francisco Chronicle‘s and Washington Post‘s “Best Books of the Year List” and won the Goldberg Prize for Jewish Fiction by emerging writers. An Assistant Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh, Reyn’s work has appeared in anthologies and publications such as The Forward, San Francisco Chronicle, The Moscow Times, Nextbook and Post Road.
Pick up a copy of The Imperial Wife at your local library. Copies of the book will also be available for purchase at the event.