Lydia Davis will read from her latest collection of short fiction, Can’t and Won’t (2014), as well as some of her recent translations of the Dutch writer A.L. Snijders and a short story by the late Lucia Berlin. In the course of the reading, she will touch briefly, between stories, on the silence of the translator; the silenced voice of the deceased; the writer’s modesty in the face of the world and language; and stylistic economy, which enhances the (silent) collaboration between writer and reader.
Winner of the MacArthur Fellowship in 2003, Lydia Davis is the author of one novel and seven story collections, the most recent of which is Can’t and Won’t. Davis’ Varieties of Disturbance was a finalist for the 2007 National Book Award. She is the winner of the 2013 Award of Merit Medal for the short story from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and of the 2013 Man Booker International Prize. She is also the translator of Swann’s Way (2003) and Madame Bovary (2010), both of which were awarded the French-American Foundation Translation Prize. The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis, published in 2009, was described by James Wood in The New Yorker as “a grand cumulative achievement.”
Reception to follow
Co-sponsored by the Scripps College English Department