Lydia Davis

Julie Tanner (Queen Mary, University of London)

Ed. by Kerry Myler, Newman University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

Born 15 Jul 1947
Activity c. 1976-ongoing

Places

Active in United States

Activities

Primary

Writer / Author

Resources

Lydia Davis is an American writer and translator. The recipient of the 2013 Man Booker International Prize and a MacArthur Grant, Davis is known for the marked brevity of some of her stories; her translations of Blanchot, Flaubert, and Proust, among others; and her distinctive writing style, which locates uncanniness in the everyday and upholds the slipperiness of language and memory.

Lydia Davis was born on July 15, 1947 in Northampton, Massachusetts to parents Hope Hale Davis and Robert Gorham Davis, who met at a workshop for radical writers. Both parents had careers as writers of fiction, with each publishing short stories in the New Yorker. Davis recalls growing up in a literary household:

My …

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2965 words

Citation: Tanner, Julie. "Lydia Davis". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 25 June 2020 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=14519, accessed 24 November 2024.]

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