Wikipedia

Ottessa Moshfegh

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.

Ottessa Moshfegh
Moshfegh at the 2015 Texas Book Festival.
Moshfegh at the 2015 Texas Book Festival.
BornOttessa Charlotte Moshfegh
(1981-05-20) May 20, 1981 (age 42)
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Occupation
  • Novelist
  • writer
NationalityAmerican
Alma materBarnard College (BA)
Brown University (MFA)
Genre
  • Fiction
  • essays
Notable worksEileen
My Year of Rest and Relaxation
PartnerLuke B. Goebel

Early life and education edit

Moshfegh was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1981.[5] Her mother was born in Croatia and her father, who is Jewish,[6] was born in Iran.[7] 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[8] and received her BA in English from Barnard College in 2002.[9] She completed an MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University in 2011.[9] During her MFA study at Brown, she taught undergraduates, including Antonia Angress, author of the 2022 novel Sirens & Muses.[10] Moshfegh was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in fiction at Stanford University from 2013 to 2015.[11][12]

Career edit

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."[13]

Works edit

In 2014, Fence Books published Moshfegh's novella McGlue. McGlue was the first recipient of the Fence Modern Prize in Prose.[14]

In August 2015, Penguin Press published Moshfegh's novel Eileen. It received positive reviews.[15][16] The book was shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize.[17] 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.[18]

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.[19] Recently graduated from college and ambivalently mourning the recent deaths of her parents, she quits her job as a gallerist[19] 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.[20]

Moshfegh is a frequent contributor to the Paris Review and has published six stories in the journal since 2012.[21]

In August 2020, Vintage published Moshfegh's third novel, Death in Her Hands.[22] Moshfegh has called the book "a loneliness story."[11]

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.[23]

Moshfegh co-wrote the 2022 drama film Causeway with her husband, Luke Goebel, and Elizabeth Sanders.[24] It premiered at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival.[25]

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.[26]

Personal life edit

Moshfegh is married to the writer Luke B. Goebel, whom she met during an interview.[27] They live in Pasadena, California.[28]

Awards and honors edit

Bibliography edit

Novels edit

Short fiction edit

Collections
Stories[b]
Title Year First published Reprinted/collected Notes
McGlue 2014 Novella
My new novel 2021 Moshfegh, Ottessa (2021). My new novel. Artwork by Issy Wood. Picture Books/Gagosian. ISBN 978-1-951449-24-7. Novella. Includes The down payment by Issy Wood.
  • "Medicine", Vice, December 1, 2007
  • "Disgust" (alternately titled "Mr Wu"), The Paris Review, No. 202, Fall 2012
  • "Bettering Myself", The Paris Review, No. 204 Spring 2013
  • "Malibu", Vice, July 3, 2013
  • "The Weirdos", The Paris Review, No. 206, Fall 2013
  • "A Dark and Winding Road", The Paris Review, No. 207, Winter 2013
  • "No Place for Good People", The Paris Review, No. 209, Summer 2014
  • "Slumming", The Paris Review, No. 211, Winter 2014
  • "Nothing Ever Happens Here", Granta, Issue 131, Spring 2015
  • "The Surrogate", Vice, June 5, 2015
  • "Dancing in the Moonlight", The Paris Review, No. 214 Fall 2015
  • "The Beach Boy", The New Yorker, January 4, 2016
  • "The Locked Room", The Baffler, Spring 2016
  • "An Honest Woman", The New Yorker, October 24, 2016
  • "Love Stories", Vice, December 5, 2016
  • "Brom", Granta, Issue 139, 2017
  • "The Pornographers", Vice, March 26, 2017
  • "I Was a Public Schooler", The Paris Review, No. 233, Summer 2020
  • "The Imitations", Apartamento, No. 27, May 17, 2021

Essays edit

Critical studies and reviews of Moshfegh's work edit

Homesick for another world
  • Livingstone, Josephine (January–February 2017). "Ordinary monsters : Ottessa Moshfegh plots twisted fairy tales for an age of alienation". The New Republic. 248 (1–2): 59–60.

———————

Notes
  1. ^ Treisman, Deborah (December 28, 2015). "This Week in Fiction: Ottessa Moshfegh on the Repressed Western Consciousness". The New Yorker.
  2. ^ Short stories unless otherwise noted.

References edit

  1. ^ "Ottessa Moshfegh's 3 Favorite Wanderers and Weirdos". The Dinner Part Download. American Public Media. February 10, 2017. Retrieved December 2, 2022.
  2. ^ "Ottessa Moshfegh". 10 Things That Scare Me. WNYC Studios. December 4, 2018. Retrieved December 2, 2022.
  3. ^ Novak, Joanna (November 3, 2014). "Ottessa Moshfegh Is the Next Big Thing, and Here Are 7 Reasons Why". Bustle. Retrieved April 13, 2015.
  4. ^ a b c d Levy, Ariel. "Ottessa Moshfegh's Otherworldly Fiction". The New Yorker. Retrieved July 3, 2018.
  5. ^ Moshfegh, Ottessa (February 28, 2016). "Ottessa Moshfegh: I didn't set out to write Eileen as a noir novel". The Guardian (Interview). Interviewed by Kate Kellaway. Retrieved June 1, 2017.
  6. ^ "Ottessa Moshfegh's Otherworldly Fiction". The New Yorker. July 2018.
  7. ^ "Character Finds A Path Out of Her Personal Prison In 'Eileen'". NPR. August 15, 2015. Retrieved August 15, 2015.
  8. ^ Sullivan, James (January 24, 2017). "The moral to her stories is... not there". The Boston Globe. Retrieved May 18, 2021.
  9. ^ a b "Ottessa Moshfegh | Literary Arts Program". www.brown.edu. Archived from the original on May 19, 2021. Retrieved May 19, 2021.
  10. ^ "Antonia Angress, "Sirens & Muses," | Reading the Room". YouTube. The Bar and the Bookcase. August 9, 2022. (See 34:04 of 39:22 in video.)
  11. ^ a b Christensen, Lauren (April 16, 2020). "Ottessa Moshfegh Is Only Human". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved May 18, 2021.
  12. ^ a b "Former Stegner Fellows | Creative Writing Program". stanford.edu. Retrieved October 18, 2023.
  13. ^ Phillips, Kaitlin (July 19, 2018). "Ottessa Moshfegh Plays to Win". The Cut. Retrieved April 29, 2022.
  14. ^ "McGlue Otessa Moshfeg | Fence Books". www.fenceportal.org. Retrieved May 19, 2021.
  15. ^ "Eileen: A Novel". Penguin Press.
  16. ^ King, Lily (August 14, 2015). "'Eileen,' by Ottessa Moshfegh". The New York Times. Retrieved August 14, 2015.
  17. ^ Laity, Paul (September 16, 2016). "Ottessa Moshfegh interview: 'Eileen started out as a joke – also I'm broke, also I want to be famous'". The Guardian.
  18. ^ Sarah Shaffi (September 19, 2014). "Two from Moshfegh for Cape". The Bookseller.
  19. ^ a b "My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh – caustic and acute". the Guardian. July 22, 2018. Retrieved May 18, 2021.
  20. ^ "Jailbait". Granta Magazine. August 9, 2018. Retrieved September 6, 2019.
  21. ^ a b Stein, Lorin (October 28, 2014). "Ottessa Moshfegh". BOMB Magazine. Retrieved October 18, 2023.
  22. ^ "Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh review – meandering murder mystery". the Guardian. October 9, 2020. Retrieved May 18, 2021.
  23. ^ "Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh". Kirkus Reviews. March 30, 2022. Retrieved November 26, 2022.
  24. ^ "Causeway". Writers Guild of America East. Retrieved August 15, 2022.
  25. ^ Brunner, Raven (October 7, 2022). "'Causeway' on Apple TV+: Trailer, Cast, Premiere Date and More". Decider. Retrieved April 12, 2024.
  26. ^ "Ottessa Moshfegh | Biography, Books, Eileen, & Facts | Britannica". www.britannica.com. March 23, 2024. Retrieved April 23, 2024.
  27. ^ Phillips, Kaitlin (July 19, 2018). "Ottessa Moshfegh Plays to Win". The Cut. Retrieved March 2, 2019.
  28. ^ "You're Probably Wrong About Ottessa Moshfegh".
  29. ^ "The Fence Modern Prize in Prose". Past winners. Archived from the original on November 24, 2015. Retrieved November 23, 2015.
  30. ^ "The Believer Book Award". The Believer. November 2015. Retrieved November 23, 2015.
  31. ^ Mark Shanahan (March 16, 2016). "Newton's Ottessa Moshfegh wins 2016 PEN/Hemingway Award". Boston Globe. Retrieved June 22, 2016.

External links edit

 
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