Lydia Davis

Updated on Dec 11, 2023

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Occupation Writer Name Lydia Davis Nationality American Role Writer		Alma mater Barnard College Period 1976–present

Born July 15, 1947 (age 76) Northampton, Massachusetts, US ( 1947-07-15 ) Genre Short story, novel, essay Education Barnard College (1965–1970) Spouse Paul Auster (m. 1974–1979), Alan Cote Parents Robert Gorham Davis, Hope Hale Davis Books Can't and Won't, The Collected Stories of, Varieties of Disturbance, The end of the story, Break It Down Similar People Marcel Proust, Paul Auster, Gustave Flaubert, Siri Hustvedt, Eliot Weinberger
Children Daniel Auster, Theo Cote

Lydia davis with ben marcus 16 may 2012

Lydia Davis (born July 15, 1947) is an American writer noted for literary works of extreme brevity (commonly called "flash fiction"). 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.

Lydia Davis Lydia Davis Wins The Man Booker International Prize

Lydia davis reads some of her very short stories

Early life and education

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Davis was born in Northampton, Massachusetts, on July 15, 1947. 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. 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." She studied at Barnard College, where she mostly wrote poetry.

Lydia Davis Lydia Davis Reading 39Goodbye Louise39 Louisiana Channel

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

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.

Lydia Davis Lydia Davis MacArthur Foundation

Davis has also translated Proust, Flaubert, Blanchot, Foucault, Michel Leiris, Pierre Jean Jouve and other French writers, 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." 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. 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". Her "distinctive voice has never been easy to fit into conventional categories", writes Kassia Boddy in the Columbia Companion to the 21st Century Short Story. Boddy writes: "Davis's parables are most successful when they examine the problems of communication between men and women, and the strategies each uses to interpret the other’s words and actions."

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. She was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005. Davis was a distinguished speaker at the 2004 &NOW Festival at the University of Notre Dame.

Davis was announced as the winner of the 2013 Man Booker International Prize on 22 May 2013. 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." Davis won £60,000 as part of the biennial award.

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

Awards

1986 PEN/Hemingway Award finalist, for Break It Down

1988 Whiting Award for Fiction

"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

1999 Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres for fiction and translation.

"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

2007 National Book Award Fiction finalist, for Varieties of Disturbance: Stories

"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

2013 Philolexian Society Award for Distinguished Literary Achievement

2013 Man Booker International Prize

Selected works

The Thirteenth Woman and Other Stories, Living Hand, 1976

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

Jean Chesneaux, Françoise Le Barbier, Marie-Claire Bergère (1977). China from the 1911 Revolution to Liberation. Translators Paul Auster and Lydia Davis. Harvester Press. CS1 maint: Multiple names: authors list (link)

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.

Giroud Francoise (1986). Marie Curie: A Life. Translator Lydia Davis. Holmes & Meier. ISBN 0841909776.

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

Lydia Davis Wikipedia

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