Lydia Davis

Lydia Davis is an American short story writer, novelist, essayist, poet, and translator known for her concise and innovative contributions to contemporary American literature. Davis is recognized for her very short stories, with some works consisting of only one or two sentences, and has been described as a master of flash fiction.

Davis's body of work includes one novel and several collections of stories, such as "Can't and Won't," as well as nonfiction collections like "Essays One" and "Essays Two." Her story collections include "The Thirteenth Woman and Other Stories," "Break It Down," which was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, and "Varieties of Disturbance," a finalist for the National Book Award. "The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis" was listed among the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century by The New York Times. Davis has influenced a range of contemporary authors, including Jonathan Franzen, Dave Eggers, Miranda July, and David Foster Wallace.

In addition to her original fiction, Davis has established a significant career as a translator of French literature. She has translated works by Jean-Paul Sartre, Gustave Flaubert, Marcel Proust, and Maurice Blanchot, as well as biographies of Marie Curie and Alexis de Tocqueville. Her translations of Proust's "Swann's Way" and Flaubert's "Madame Bovary" have received critical acclaim. Davis's distinctive literary voice is evident in both her fiction and translation work.

Davis's achievements in literature and translation have been recognized with numerous honors, including being named a Chevalier and Officier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government, receiving a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award of Merit medal, the Man Booker International Prize, and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story.

Davis is a professor emerita at the University at Albany, SUNY, and has served as a Lillian Vernon Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at New York University. She is among the few contemporary authors to have appeared in both The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Poetry series. Her work "Into the Weeds" was published by Yale University Press, further demonstrating her ongoing influence in the fields of short fiction, literary translation, and American literature.