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Ottessa Moshfegh
American author (born 1981) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Ottessa Charlotte Moshfegh (/oʊˈtɛsə ˈmɒʃfɛɡ/;[1][2] born May 20, 1981) is an American author and novelist.[3] Her debut novel, Eileen (2015), won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and was a fiction finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.[4] Moshfegh's subsequent novels include My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Death in Her Hands, and Lapvona.
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Early life and education
Moshfegh was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1981.[5] Her mother was born in Croatia and her father in Iran.[6] Her parents were both musicians and taught at the New England Conservatory of Music. As a child, Moshfegh learned to play piano and clarinet.[4]
She attended the Commonwealth School in Boston[7] and received her BA in English from Barnard College in 2002.[8] She completed an MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University in 2011.[8] During her MFA study at Brown, she taught undergraduates, including Antonia Angress, author of the 2022 novel Sirens & Muses.[9] Moshfegh was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in fiction at Stanford University from 2013 to 2015.[10][11]
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Career
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After college, Moshfegh moved to China, where she taught English and worked in a punk bar.[4]
In her mid-twenties, Moshfegh moved to New York City. She worked for Overlook Press, and then as an assistant for Jean Stein. After contracting cat-scratch fever, she left the city and earned an MFA from Brown University.[4] During those years, she supported herself by selling vintage clothing which she has described as mostly "tea dresses."[12]
Works
In 2014, Fence Books published Moshfegh's novella McGlue. McGlue was the first recipient of the Fence Modern Prize in Prose.[13]
In August 2015, Penguin Press published Moshfegh's novel Eileen. It received positive reviews.[14][15] The book was shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize.[16] In the book, Eileen, the protagonist and narrator, describes a series of events that occurred years ago, when she was young and living in a Massachusetts town that she calls "X-ville." At the beginning of the novel, she is working as a secretary at a local juvenile prison while living with and caring for her abusive father, a retired police officer with alcoholism and paranoia. As the story continues, the dramatic situation that causes her to leave her life in X-ville is revealed.
Homesick for Another World, a collection of short stories, was published in January 2017.[17]
On July 10, 2018, Penguin Press published Moshfegh's second novel, My Year of Rest and Relaxation. The book describes a young art history graduate living in New York City over 15 months from mid-June 2000.[18] Recently graduated from college and ambivalently mourning the recent deaths of her parents, she quits her job as a gallerist[18] and undertakes to sleep for a year with the assistance of sleeping pills and other medications prescribed by a disreputable psychiatrist.
Also in 2018, Moshfegh wrote a piece for Granta in which she describes an experience she had with a much older male writer when she was 17 years old.[19]
Moshfegh is a frequent contributor to the Paris Review and has published six stories in the journal since 2012.[20]
In August 2020, Vintage published Moshfegh's third novel, Death in Her Hands.[21] Moshfegh has called the book "a loneliness story."[10]
In June 2022, Penguin Press published Moshfegh's fourth novel, Lapvona, which follows Marek, the abused son of the town shepherd, along with other characters from the fictional, medieval fiefdom of Lapvona.[22]
Moshfegh co-wrote the 2022 drama film Causeway with her husband, Luke Goebel, and Elizabeth Sanders.[23] It premiered at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival.[24]
Moshfegh has cited the poet and novelist Charles Bukowski as an influence on her work. Like Moshfegh, Bukowski created characters who were considered socially deprived and isolated.[25]
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Personal life
Moshfegh is married to the writer Luke B. Goebel, whom she met during an interview.[26] They live in Pasadena, California.[27]
Awards and honors
- 2013–15 Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University[11]
- 2013 Plimpton Prize for Fiction from The Paris Review for her story "Bettering Myself"[20]
- 2014 Believer Book Award winner for McGlue[28]
- 2016 MacDowell Colony Fellowship[29]
- 2016 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for Eileen[30]
- 2016 Man Booker Prize (shortlist) for Eileen
- 2018 The Story Prize finalist for Homesick for Another World
Bibliography
Novels
- Eileen (2015)
- My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)
- Death in Her Hands (2020)
- Lapvona (2022)
Short fiction
Novellas
- McGlue (2014)
- My New Novel (2021)
References
External links
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