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Ottessa Moshfegh

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Ottessa Moshfegh
Moshfegh at the 2015 Texas Book Festival.
Moshfegh at the 2015Texas Book Festival.
BornOttessa Charlotte Moshfegh
(1981-05-20)May 20, 1981(age 43)
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

Ottessa Charlotte Moshfegh(/oʊˈtɛsəˈmɒʃfɛɡ/;[1][2]born May 20, 1981) is an American author and novelist.[3]Herdebut novel,Eileen(2015), won theHemingway Foundation/PEN Award,was shortlisted for theBooker Prize,and was a fiction finalist for theNational Book Critics Circle Award.[4]Moshfegh's subsequent novels includeMy Year of Rest and Relaxation,Death in Her Hands,andLapvona.

Early life and education

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Moshfegh was born inBoston, Massachusetts,in 1981.[5]Her mother was born inCroatiaand her father, who is Jewish,[6]was born inIran.[7]Her parents were both musicians and taught at theNew England Conservatory of Music.As a child, Moshfegh learned to play piano and clarinet.[4]

She attended theCommonwealth Schoolin Boston[8]and received her BA in English fromBarnard Collegein 2002.[9]She completed an MFA in Literary Arts fromBrown Universityin 2011.[9]During her MFA study at Brown, she taught undergraduates, includingAntonia Angress,author of the 2022 novelSirens & Muses.[10]Moshfegh was aWallace Stegner Fellowin fiction atStanford Universityfrom 2013 to 2015.[11][12]

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 forOverlook Press,and then as an assistant forJean Stein.After contractingcat-scratch fever,she left the city and earned an MFA fromBrown University.[4]During those years, she supported herself by selling vintage clothing which she has described as mostly "tea dresses."[13]

Works

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

In August 2015, Penguin Press published Moshfegh's novelEileen.It received positive reviews.[15][16]The book was shortlisted for the2016 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 forGrantain 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 theParis Reviewand has published six stories in the journal since 2012.[21]

In August 2020,Vintagepublished 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, medievalfiefdomof Lapvona.[23]

Moshfegh co-wrote the 2022 drama filmCausewaywith her husband, Luke Goebel, and Elizabeth Sanders.[24]It premiered at the2022 Toronto International Film Festival.[25]

Moshfegh has cited the poet and novelistCharles Bukowskias an influence on her work. Like Moshfegh, Bukowski created characters who were considered socially deprived and isolated.[26]

Personal life

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

Awards and honors

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Bibliography

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Novels

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Short fiction

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Collections

Novellas

  • My New Novel, 2021[33]
Stories
Title Publication Collected in
"The Companion" Fence4.2 (Fall 2001-Winter 2002) -
"Body" Noon(2003) -
"Ruby" -
"Corn" -
"Knot" -
"Station" -
"What Never Came Across" Unsaid1.1 (2004) -
"Medicine" Vice(December 1, 2007) -
"Mr. Wu"
aka "Disgust"		 The Paris Review202 (Fall 2012) Homesick for Another World
"Bettering Myself" The Paris Review204 (Spring 2013)
"Malibu" Vice(July 3, 2013)
"The Weirdos" The Paris Review206 (Fall 2013)
"A Dark and Winding Road" The Paris Review207 (Winter 2013-14)
"No Place for Good People" The Paris Review209 (Summer 2014)
"Slumming" The Paris Review211 (Winter 2014-15)
"Nothing Ever Happens Here" Granta131 (Spring 2015)
"The Surrogate" Vice(June 5, 2015)
"Dancing in the Moonlight" The Paris Review214 (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) -
"A Better Place" Homesick for Another World(January 2017) Homesick for Another World
"Brom" Granta139 (Spring 2017) -
"The Pornographers" Vice(March 26, 2017) -
"I Was a Public Schooler" The Paris Review233 (Summer 2020) -
"The Imitations" Apartamento27 (May 17, 2021) -
"When Stars Collide" The New Yorker(July 6, 2023) -

Essays

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Critical studies and reviews of Moshfegh's work

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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.

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Notes

References

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  1. ^"Ottessa Moshfegh's 3 Favorite Wanderers and Weirdos".The Dinner Part Download.American Public Media. February 10, 2017.RetrievedDecember 2,2022.
  2. ^"Ottessa Moshfegh".10 Things That Scare Me.WNYC Studios. December 4, 2018.RetrievedDecember 2,2022.
  3. ^Novak, Joanna (November 3, 2014)."Ottessa Moshfegh Is the Next Big Thing, and Here Are 7 Reasons Why".Bustle.RetrievedApril 13,2015.
  4. ^abcdLevy, Ariel."Ottessa Moshfegh's Otherworldly Fiction".The New Yorker.RetrievedJuly 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.RetrievedJune 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.RetrievedAugust 15,2015.
  8. ^Sullivan, James (January 24, 2017)."The moral to her stories is... not there".The Boston Globe.RetrievedMay 18,2021.
  9. ^ab"Ottessa Moshfegh | Literary Arts Program".www.brown.edu.Archived fromthe originalon May 19, 2021.RetrievedMay 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. ^abChristensen, Lauren (April 16, 2020)."Ottessa Moshfegh Is Only Human".The New York Times.ISSN0362-4331.RetrievedMay 18,2021.
  12. ^ab"Former Stegner Fellows | Creative Writing Program".stanford.edu.RetrievedOctober 18,2023.
  13. ^Phillips, Kaitlin (July 19, 2018)."Ottessa Moshfegh Plays to Win".The Cut.RetrievedApril 29,2022.
  14. ^"McGlue Otessa Moshfeg | Fence Books".www.fenceportal.org.RetrievedMay 19,2021.
  15. ^"Eileen: A Novel".Penguin Press.
  16. ^King, Lily (August 14, 2015)."'Eileen,' by Ottessa Moshfegh ".The New York Times.RetrievedAugust 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. ^ab"My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh – caustic and acute".the Guardian.July 22, 2018.RetrievedMay 18,2021.
  20. ^"Jailbait".Granta Magazine.August 9, 2018.RetrievedSeptember 6,2019.
  21. ^abStein, Lorin (October 28, 2014)."Ottessa Moshfegh".BOMB Magazine.RetrievedOctober 18,2023.
  22. ^"Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh review – meandering murder mystery".the Guardian.October 9, 2020.RetrievedMay 18,2021.
  23. ^"Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh".Kirkus Reviews.March 30, 2022.RetrievedNovember 26,2022.
  24. ^"Causeway".Writers Guild of America East.RetrievedAugust 15,2022.
  25. ^Brunner, Raven (October 7, 2022)."'Causeway' on Apple TV+: Trailer, Cast, Premiere Date and More ".Decider.RetrievedApril 12,2024.
  26. ^"Ottessa Moshfegh | Biography, Books, Eileen, & Facts | Britannica".www.britannica.com.March 23, 2024.RetrievedApril 23,2024.
  27. ^Phillips, Kaitlin (July 19, 2018)."Ottessa Moshfegh Plays to Win".The Cut.RetrievedMarch 2,2019.
  28. ^"You're Probably Wrong About Ottessa Moshfegh".
  29. ^"The Fence Modern Prize in Prose".Past winners.Archived fromthe originalon November 24, 2015.RetrievedNovember 23,2015.
  30. ^"The Believer Book Award".The Believer.November 2015.RetrievedNovember 23,2015.
  31. ^Mark Shanahan (March 16, 2016)."Newton's Ottessa Moshfegh wins 2016 PEN/Hemingway Award".Boston Globe.RetrievedJune 22,2016.
  32. ^Treisman, Deborah (December 28, 2015)."This Week in Fiction: Ottessa Moshfegh on the Repressed Western Consciousness".The New Yorker.
  33. ^Moshfegh, Ottessa; Wood, Issy (2021).My new novel.New York, NY: Picture Books.ISBN978-1-951449-24-7.OCLC1306221572.
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