Joshua Ferris

Like other Geoffrey Wolff disciples, Joshua Ferris grabbed hold of the bestseller charts with his breakout novel, yet, ironically, the National Book Award finalist and PEN/Faulkner Award winner set himself apart from the pack of UC Irvine hits with one little word—"we." Indeed, first-person plural narration never had it so good until Ferris made this underdog form the voice of biting satire in his debut, Then We Came to the End, a tragicomedy based around a Chicago advertising agency during the Y2K dot-com bust. A former ad firm nine-to-fiver, Ferris proved willing to lampoon even that which struck close to home—or office—a quality that might have stymied a climb up the corporate ladder, though certainly not one up the literary ranks. His sophomore effort, The Unnamed, the story of a man who leaves his wife with nearly the frequency of the five o'clock news, lacked much of the comedic levity of its critically acclaimed predecessor. Regardless, Ferris again stared down ugly truths, thereby solidifying his reputation as a straight shooter unafraid of addressing the big bad malaises that threaten to blow the Man down this millennium.