Lydia Davis facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Lydia Davis
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Davis at Kelly Writers House in 2017
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| Born | July 15, 1947 Northampton, Massachusetts, US |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Barnard College |
| Period | 1976–present |
| Genre | Short story, novel, essay |
| Spouses |
Alan Cote |
| Children | 2 |
| Relatives | Robert Gorham Davis (father) Hope Hale Davis (mother) Claudia Cockburn (half-sister) |
Lydia Davis (born July 15, 1947) is an American short story writer, novelist, essayist, and translator from French and other languages, who often writes short (one or two pages long) short stories. Davis 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. 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 attended high school at The Putney School, Class of 1965. She studied at Barnard College, and at that time she mostly wrote poetry.
In 1974 Davis married Paul Auster, with whom she had a son named Daniel (1977-2022). Auster and Davis later divorced; 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.
Davis has also translated Proust, Flaubert, Blanchot, Foucault, Michel Butor, Michel Leiris, Pierre Jean Jouve and other French writers, as well as Belgian novelist Conrad Detrez and the Dutch writer A. L. Snijders.
Selected works
- The Thirteenth Woman and Other Stories, Living Hand, 1976
(novel)
- Lydia Davis: Documenta Series 078. Hatje Cantz. 2012. ISBN: 9783775729277
Selected translations
(Davis translated the 19-page afterword by Maurice Blanchot, "Joubert et l'espace.")
- Conrad Detrez (1984). A Weed for Burning. Translator Lydia Davis. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
- Michel Butor (1986). The Spirit of Mediterranean Places. Translator Lydia Davis. Marlboro Press.
See also
In Spanish: Lydia Davis para niños
