Lydia Davis



Lydia Davis (born 1947) is a contemporary American writer noted for her short stories. Davis is also a French translator, and has produced several new translations of French literary classics, including Proust's Swann’s Way and Flaubert's Madame Bovary. The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis was published as a single volume in 2010.

Life
She is the daughter of Robert Gorham Davis and Hope Hale Davis. From 1974 to 1978 Davis was married to Paul Auster, with whom she has a son, Daniel Auster. Davis is currently married to artist Alan Cote, with whom she has a son, Theo Cote. She is a professor of creative writing at University at Albany, SUNY and Lillian Vernon Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at New York University.

She has published six collections of short stories, including The Thirteenth Woman and Other Stories (1976) and Break It Down (1986). Her most recent collection was Varieties of Disturbance, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2007. "The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis", published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2009, contains all her stories to date.

Her stories are acclaimed for their brevity and humour. Many are only one or two sentences. Some of her stories are considered poetry or somewhere between philosophy, poetry and short story. Three contemporary authors share the distinction of appearing in both The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Poetry series: Lydia Davis, Stuart Dybek, and Alice Fulton.

Davis has also translated Proust, Flaubert, Blanchot, Foucault, Michel Leiris, Pierre Jean Jouve and other French writers.

Lydia was a distinguished speaker at the 2004 &NOW Festival at the University of Notre Dame.

Writing
Davis has been described as "the master of a literary form largely of her own invention." Author Carmela Ciuraru has written of Davis's stories: "Anyone hung up on the conventional (and often predictable) beginning-middle-end narrative format may be disappointed by the wild peregrinations found here. Yet these stories are endearing and rich in their own way, and can be counted on without exception to offer the element of surprise." Author Tao Lin has repeatedly cited her work as inspiration for his own work, specifically her first novel as inspiration for his second novel.

Recognition
In October 2003 Davis received a MacArthur Fellowship. She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005.

Awards

 * St. Martin, a short story that first appeared in Grand Street, was included in The Best American Short Stories 1997.
 * 2003 MacArthur Fellows Program
 * 2007 National Book Award Fiction Finalist, for Varieties of Disturbance: Stories
 * PEN/Hemingway Award Finalist, for Break It Down

Publications

 * The Thirteenth Woman and Other Stories. Living Hand, (1976)
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