Election Fraud, Intimidation, Ballot Theft

Election Day may put you in the mood for Election, Tom Perrotta's 1998 novel about a hotly contested election for student body president at a suburban high school. The novel was made into an Oscar-nominated 1999 film starring Reese Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick.

Perrotta visits the Writers Institute, Tuesday, November 29. He will be speaking about his new novel The Leftovers.

Here's Perrotta in a recent NPR interview:

"I don't feel like I'm a satirist. I don't even think I ever was, but that label has stuck to me because the movie Election was a brilliant satire, and it amped up some elements that were muted in the book to do that. And that's the first way people became familiar with my work. Labels tend to stick and first impressions tend to stick, but I will say that what happens for me is that I do start in a place that feels like it might lead to a satire, and then the process of spending time with characters — getting inside their heads, trying to see the world the way they see it — pulls me away from satire. And I think a lot of times you can't see where you're going to end up."