Writers-at-Work Series Presents Lydia Davis
Muhlenberg College’s Writers-at-Work series, sponsored by the department of English, presents a reading and book signing by Lydia Davis, Thursday, April 22, 7:30 p.m., in Miller Forum, Moyer Hall.Tuesday, April 20, 2010 11:45 AM
Davis is a short story author and a New York State Writers Institute Fellow. She is also a member of the English Department faculty at the University at Albany Davis has been called "one of the quiet giants . . . of American fiction" (Los Angeles Times Book Review), "an American virtuoso of the short story form" (Salon), and "one of the best writers in America" ("O Magazine"). She is renowned for perfecting the craft of the "extremely short short story." Davis’ work has been published in The New Yorker, Exquisite Corpse, Harper’s, Shiny, Conjunctions, Granta, Grand Street, and countless other literary journals. Also, her work has been translated into French, German, Spanish, Dutch, Norwegian, Japanese, Finnish, and Farsi.
Davis’ latest book is "The Collected Stories" (2009), a collection of stories from four earlier works; "Varieties of Disturbance" (2007), "Samuel Johnson is Indignant" (2001), "Almost No Memory" (1997) and "Break it Down" (1986).
Davis received the MacArthur Foundation "Genius" award in 2003. The MacArthur Foundation acknowledged Davis for showing "how language itself can entertain, how all that what one word says, and leaves unsaid, can hold a reader's interest…. Davis grants readers a glimpse of life's previously invisible details, revealing new sources of philosophical insights and beauty."
Davis is also a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in France for her fiction and translation. She is a well-known translator of French literary fiction into English. Davis published a Marcel Proust work, "Swann's Way" (2003), which is one of the most important literary works of the 20th century.
Davis is currently working on a translation of Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, to be published by Viking Penguin for this fall.
