Rebecca Makkai, born in Illinois in 1978, is a novelist and literature professor. She is the author of the novels The Bookworm and The Hundred-Year House, and the short story collection Music for Wartime. Her third novel, The Optimists, received the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, the LA Times Book Prize, and the Chicago Review of Books Award, among other awards. It was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and was chosen by The New York Times as one of the best books of the year.