Lydia Davis

Lydia Davis (born July 15, 1947) is an American writer noted for literary works of extreme brevity (commonly called "flash fiction").^[1][2][3] Davis is also a short story writer, novelist, essayist, and translator from French and other languages, and has produced several new translations of French literary classics, including Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust and Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert.

Early life and education

Davis was born in Northampton, Massachusetts, on July 15, 1947.^[4] She is the daughter of Robert Gorham Davis, a critic and professor of English, and Hope Hale Davis, a short-story writer, teacher, and memoirist.^[5] Davis initially studied music—first piano, then violin—which was her first love. On becoming a writer, Davis has said, "I was probably always headed to being a writer, even though that wasn't my first love. I guess I must have always wanted to write in some part of me or I wouldn't have done it."^[6] She studied at Barnard College, where she mostly wrote poetry.^[7]

In 1974 Davis married Paul Auster, with whom she had a son named Daniel.^[5] Auster and Davis later divorced and Davis is now married to the artist Alan Cote,^[8] with whom she has another son, Theo Cote. She is a professor of creative writing at the University at Albany, SUNY,^[8] and was a Lillian Vernon Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at New York University in 2012.^[9]

Career

Davis has published six collections of fiction, including The Thirteenth Woman and Other Stories (1976) and Break It Down (1986), a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award. Her most recent collections were Varieties of Disturbance, a finalist for the National Book Award published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2007, and Can't and Won't (2013). The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis (2009) contains all her fiction up to 2008.

Davis has also translated Proust, Flaubert, Blanchot, Foucault, Michel Leiris, Pierre Jean Jouve and other French writers,^[4] as well as the Dutch writer A.L. Snijders.

Reception and influence

Davis has been described as "the master of a literary form largely of her own invention."^[10] Many of her fictions are only one or two sentences. Davis has compared these fictions to skyscrapers in the sense that they are surrounded by an imposing blank expanse.^[11] Michael LaPointe writing in the LA Review of Books goes so far as to say while "Lydia Davis did not invent flash fiction, ... she is so far and away its most eminent contemporary practitioner".^[3] Of contemporary authors, only Davis, Stuart Dybek, and Alice Fulton share the distinction of appearing in both The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Poetry series.

In October 2003, Davis received a MacArthur Fellowship.^[12] She was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005.^[13] Davis was a distinguished speaker at the 2004 &NOW Festival at the University of Notre Dame.^[14]

Davis was announced as the winner of the 2013 Man Booker International Prize on 22 May 2013.^[15] The official announcement of Davis' award on the Man Booker Prize website described her work as having "the brevity and precision of poetry". The judging panel chair Christopher Ricks commented that "There is vigilance to her stories, and great imaginative attention. Vigilance as how to realise things down to the very word or syllable; vigilance as to everybody's impure motives and illusions of feeling."^[16] Davis won £60,000 as part of the biennial award.^[17]

She is widely considered "one of the most original minds in American fiction today."^[18]

Awards

• 1986 PEN/Hemingway Award finalist, for Break It Down^[4]
• 1988 Whiting Award for Fiction^[5]
• "St. Martin," a short story that first appeared in Grand Street, was included in The Best American Short Stories 1997.
• 1997 Guggenheim Fellowship
• 1998 Lannan Literary Award for Fiction^[4]
• 1999 Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres for fiction and translation.^[12]
• "Betrayal," a short-short story that first appeared in Hambone, was included in The Best American Poetry 1999
• "A Mown Lawn," a short-short-story that first appeared in McSweeney's, was included in The Best American Poetry 2001
• 2003 MacArthur Fellows Program^[12]
• 2007 National Book Award Fiction finalist, for Varieties of Disturbance: Stories^[19]
• "Men," a short-short story that first appeared in 32 Poems, was included in The Best American Poetry 2008
• 2013 American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Award of Merit Medal^[20]
• 2013 Philolexian Society Award for Distinguished Literary Achievement
• 2013 Man Booker International Prize^[15]

Selected works

• The Thirteenth Woman and Other Stories, Living Hand, 1976^[4]
• Sketches for a Life of Wassilly. Station Hill Press. 1981. ISBN 978-0-930794-45-3. 
• Story and Other Stories. The Figures. 1985. ISBN 978-0-935724-17-2. 
• Break It Down. Farrar Straus & Giroux. 1986. ISBN 0-374-11653-9. 
• The End of the Story. Farrar Straus & Giroux. 1994. ISBN 978-0-374-14831-7.  (novel)
• Almost No Memory. Farrar Straus & Giroux. 1997. ISBN 978-0-374-10281-4. 
• Samuel Johnson Is Indignant. McSweeney's. 2001. ISBN 978-0-9703355-9-3. 
• Varieties of Disturbance. Farrar Straus & Giroux. May 15, 2007. ISBN 978-0-374-28173-1. 
• Proust, Blanchot, and a Woman in Red. Center for Writers and Translators. 2007. ISBN 9780955296352. 
• The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 2009. ISBN 978-0-374-27060-5. 
• The Cows. Sarabande Books. 2011. ISBN 9781932511932. 
• Can't and Won't: Stories. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2014. ISBN 9780374118587. 

Anthologies

• Charles Wright, David Lehman, eds. (2008). "Men". The Best American Poetry 2008. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-0-7432-9975-6.  CS1 maint: Uses editors parameter (link)
• Robert Hass, David Lehman, eds. (2001). "A Mown Lawn". The Best American Poetry 2001. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-0-7432-0384-5.  CS1 maint: Uses editors parameter (link)
• E. Annie Proulx, Katrina Kenison, ed. (1997). "St. Martin". The Best American Short Stories 1997. Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 978-0-395-79866-9. 
• Bill Henderson, ed. (1989). The Pushcart prize: best of the small presses. Pushcart Press. ISBN 978-0-916366-58-2. 

Translations

• Georges Simenon (1979). Aboard the Aquitaine (Simenon African Trio). Translators Paul Auster and Lydia Davis. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. ISBN 0-15-103955-0. 
• Maurice Blanchot (1981). P. Adams Sitney, ed. The Gaze of Orpheus, and Other Literary Essays. Translator Lydia Davis. Station Hill Press. ISBN 978-0930794378. 
• Marcel Proust (2004). Lydia Davis, Christopher Prendergast, eds. Swann's Way. Translator Lydia Davis. Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-243796-4.  CS1 maint: Uses editors parameter (link)
• Vivant Denon (2009). Peter Brooks, ed. No Tomorrow. Translator Lydia Davis. New York Review of Books. ISBN 978-1-59017-326-8. 
• Gustave Flaubert (2010). Lydia Davis, ed. Madame Bovary. Translator Lydia Davis. Viking Adult. ISBN 978-0-670-02207-6. 

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Lydia Davis.

• "Lydia Davis, Art of Fiction No. 227". The Paris Review (Interview) (212). Interview with Andrea Aguilar and Johanne Fronth-Nygren. Spring 2015. 
• "Almost No Memory". Bookworm (Interview). Interview with Michael Silverblatt. KCRW. September 1998. 
• "Samuel Johnson Is Indignant". Bookworm (Interview). Interview with Michael Silverblatt. KCRW. July 2002. 
• "Varieties of Disturbance". Bookworm (Interview). Interview with Michael Silverblatt. KCRW. June 2007. 
• "Can't and Won't". Bookworm (Interview). Interview with Michael Silverblatt. KCRW. June 2014. 
• The Coffin Factory short story
• The Believer interview with Sarah Manguso
• Samuel Johnson Is Indignant – TMO Meets Lydia Davis
• BOMB interview with Francine Prose
• Gigantic interview with James Yeh
• "Q&A with Lydia Davis", The Boston Globe, Kate Bolick, April 29, 2007
• "2007 National Book Award Fiction Finalist Interview With Lydia Davis", National Book Foundation
• "Structure Is Structure", Poetry Foundation
• "A Conversation with Lydia Davis", Web Del Sol
• Audio-files @ PENNsound listen to Lydia Davis read from her work
• Author Page at Internationales Literatufestival Berlin Davis was a Guest of the ILB ( Internationales Literatufestival Berlin / Germany ) in 2001
• "Lydia Davis", Penn Sound
• Lydia Davis: Reading 'Goodbye Louise' Video by Louisiana Channel
• Profile at The Whiting Foundation