Siri Hustvedt facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Siri Hustvedt
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Hustvedt in 2014
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| Born | February 19, 1955 Northfield, Minnesota, U.S. |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Education | St. Olaf College (BA) Columbia University (PhD) |
| Genre | Novels, poetry, short stories |
| Years active | 1983–present |
| Spouse | |
| Children | Sophie Auster |
| Parents | Lloyd Hustvedt Ester Vegan |
Siri Hustvedt (born February 19, 1955) is an American writer. She is known for her novels, essays, and poetry. Her books often explore big ideas about how we think and feel.
Some of her most famous books include The Blindfold (1992), The Enchantment of Lily Dahl (1996), and What I Loved (2003). What I Loved and The Summer Without Men were very popular around the world. Her writings have been translated into more than thirty languages, meaning people in many countries can read her stories.
Contents
Early life and education
Siri Hustvedt was born in Northfield, Minnesota. Her father, Lloyd Hustvedt, was a professor. She went to public school in her hometown. In 1973, she graduated from the Cathedral School in Bergen, Norway.
Siri started writing when she was 13 years old. This happened after a family trip to Reykjavík, where she read many classic books. She was especially impressed by David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. After reading it, she decided she wanted to be a writer.
She earned a bachelor's degree in history from St. Olaf College in 1977. In 1978, she moved to New York City to study at Columbia University. Her very first published work was a poem in a magazine called The Paris Review. She completed her PhD in English at Columbia in 1986.
Writing career
Siri Hustvedt's first collection of poems, Reading to You, came out in 1982. After finishing her PhD, she started writing stories. Two of these stories later became part of her first novel, The Blindfold. These stories were even chosen for the Best American Short Stories collections in 1990 and 1991.
Since then, she has written many novels and essays. Her essays often look at how different ideas connect. These ideas include philosophy (how we think about life), psychoanalysis (how our minds work), and neuroscience (how our brains work). She also writes a lot about art. She has given talks at famous museums like the Prado in Madrid and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. She also wrote a book of essays about painting called Mysteries of the Rectangle.
Main themes in her work
Siri Hustvedt is a deep thinker. Her books often ask big questions about who we are and how we see the world. She explores how our minds and bodies are connected. She also looks at how our surroundings affect us.
In her book The Shaking Woman or A History of My Nerves, she writes about her own health challenges. She wanted to understand her symptoms from many different angles, not just one. Her stories often feature characters who have gone through difficult events. These events can make them feel confused or like they've lost a part of themselves.
Hustvedt's work also explores how gender roles affect people. She examines how we look at art and the ethical questions that come with it. Her essays show how she connects ideas from many different fields of study.
Awards and recognitions
Siri Hustvedt's work has received many awards. A part of her novel The Blindfold was made into a French movie called La Chambre des Magiciennes. This film won an award at the Berlin Film Festival.
Her novel What I Loved was considered for several awards in France, England, and Spain. It won the Prix des libraires du Quebec in Canada in 2003. The Summer Without Men was also nominated for an award in 2011.
In 2014, The Blazing World was nominated for the prestigious Booker Prize. It also won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction in 2015.
Siri Hustvedt has received several honorary doctorates from universities. These include the University of Oslo (2014), Université Stendhal-Grenoble (2015), and Gutenberg University-Mainz (2016). In 2019, she won the Princess of Asturias Award in Literature, which is a very important award. In 2024, she received the Openbank Literature Award for her entire writing career.
Personal life
Siri Hustvedt met her husband, who was also a writer, Paul Auster, in 1981. They got married the next year. They lived in Brooklyn, New York, until Paul Auster passed away in 2024. Their daughter, Sophie Auster (born 1987), is a singer, songwriter, and actress.
Books
Poetry
- Reading to You (1982)
Fiction
- The Blindfold (1992)
- The Enchantment of Lily Dahl (1996)
- What I Loved (2003)
- The Sorrows of an American (2008)
- The Summer Without Men (2011)
- The Blazing World (2014)
- Memories of the Future (2019)
Nonfiction
- Yonder (1998)
- Mysteries of the Rectangle: Essays on Painting (2005)
- A Plea for Eros (2005)
- The Shaking Woman or A History of My Nerves (2009)
- Living, Thinking, Looking (2012)
- A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women – Essays (2016)
- Mothers, Fathers, and Others - Essays Simon & Schuster (December 7, 2021), ISBN: 9781982176396
Translation
- Kjetsaa, Geir. Fyodor Dostoyevsky: A Writer's Life, translated by Siri Hustvedt and David McDuff (1998)
- Six poems by Tor Ulven from Vanishing Point. Writ, no. 18, 1986.
Translation editor
- Fragments for a History of the Human Body, edited by Ferber, Nadof, Tazi (1998)
Original foreign book publications
- Embodied Visions: What Does it Mean to Look at a Work of Art?, bilingual edition English-German, published as part of a series of the annual Schelling Lectures delivered at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich; Deutscher Kunst Verlag, 2010
- The Eight Voyages of Sinbad, published in Spanish Ocho Viajes Con Simbad with photographs by Reza. Madrid: La Fabrica, 2011. French edition by Actes Sud, 2011
See also
In Spanish: Siri Hustvedt para niños
