Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951) was an American novelist, short story writer, and playwright, renowned for his sharp social commentary and depictions of American life in the early 20th century. Born in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, he gained national recognition with Main Street (1920), a satirical portrait of small-town America, followed by Babbitt (1922), Arrowsmith (1925), and Dodsworth (1929). In 1930, he became the first American to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. Nissa Ren Cannon is a Lecturer in the Program in Writing and Rhetoric at Stanford, the book reviews editor for the Journal of Modern Periodical Studies, and a member of the advisory board for the Hemingway Review blog. She holds a BA in Comparative Literature and Italian from UCLA, and a Ph.D. in English from UC Santa Barbara. Prior to arriving at Stanford, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Kilachand Honors College at Boston University. Sheila Liming is an Associate Professor at Champlain College and author of Hanging Out: The Radical Power of Killing Time (2023) and What a Library Means to a Woman: Edith Wharton and the Will to Collect Books (2020). Her writing has appeared in publications like The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books, McSweeney’s, The Los Angeles Review of Books and The Globe and Mail. She lives, works, and plays the bagpipes and the accordion in Burlington, Vermont.
