2009 Presenters
Reif Larsen
Reif Larsen is a filmmaker, teacher, and writer. His first novel is The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet, which follows the charming adventures, through life's mysteries great and small, of T.S. Spivet, a 12-year-old genius mapmaker who lives on a ranch in Montana.
Reif Larson has shot a number of documentaries in the US, UK, and Sub-Saharan Africa about inner-city students working in the arts. He has taught creative writing workshops all over the country, including a Mormon ranch in Idaho's Snake River Valley.
Larsen went to Brown University and majored in Educational Studies. While at Brown, he spent most of a year teaching at Maru-a-Pula school in Gaborone, Botswana, and he remains on their American board of trustees. In 2008, he organized a U.S. tour of the Maru-a-Pula school marimba band in order to raise funds for AIDS orphan scholarships.
After college, Larsen worked for a year in several schools across England as part of an international linguistic research team, measuring the effect that artists, working in long term partnership with a school, had on a student's language.
Larsen currently teaches at Columbia University, where he completed his MFA in fiction. He lives in Brooklyn.
From the reviews of The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet:
“[The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet] is like nothing you’ve ever picked up…Illustrated with witty marginalia (supposedly produced by its protagonist), it is also steeped in poignancy, humor, and wisdom.” – Vanity Fair
“Two predictions about The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet: readers are going to love it as much as I did, and few if any will have experienced anything like it. I’m flabbergasted by Reif Larsen’s talent, and I was warmed by his generosity. Here is a book that does the impossible: it combines Mark Twain, Thomas Pynchon, and Little Miss Sunshine. Good novels entertain; great ones come as a gift to the readers who are lucky enough to find them. This book is a treasure.” – Stephen King
APPEARING IN: Beyond the Margins and Between the Lines
Learn more at www.tsspivet.com
