The author of two critically acclaimed novels, Jeffrey Eugenides is not afraid of taking chances with his fiction, or of getting it just right. His first novel, The Virgin Suicides, is a tale of five teenaged sisters who one by one kill themselves, while his second, Middlesex--eight years in the writing--tells the gender-bending story of a hermaphrodite, born and raised a girl, who discovers his blended identity during the teen years. While some readers find these subjects odd or off-putting, Eugenides employs them in exploring such traditional themes as the rite of adolescent passage and finding one's place in the family. In his books, "more than making reality bizarre, I tend to make bizarre things normal," Eugenides told Laura Miller in a Salon.com interview.

The Michigan-born writer worked in various fields before graduating from Brown University and earning his M.A. in creative writing from Stanford...