Heidi Julavits and Ben Marcus

What happens when one really smart, hip young writer marries another really smart, hip young writer? In the case of Ben Marcus, who heads up the MFA program in creative writing at Columbia University, and Heidi Julavits, founding editor of the Believer, the ultracool, ultrasincere arts and culture review, they do a tour together. Both are known for creating, through inventive language and dark humor, weird worlds only a few degrees different from our own—as in Marcus’ experimental novel Notable American Women and Julavits’ The Effect of Living Backwards, the story of two sisters on a hijacked plane. In addition to longer works, both writers have published short fiction and essays in such wide-ranging publications as Glamour, Esquire, the Paris Review, and Harper’s.