Lydia Davis

Lydia Davis studied at Barnard College and The Putney School. The recorded working language is French and English. The field of work recorded is literature and translation. Vladimir Nabokov is recorded as an influence. Employment is recorded with State University of New York at Albany. Distinctions recorded are International Booker Prize, Guggenheim Fellowship, MacArthur Fellows Program and Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres.

• Name — Lydia Davis • Born — 15 July 1947 • Birthplace — Northampton, Massachusetts, U.S. • Education — Barnard College • Occupation — Writer • Period — 1976–present • Genre — Short story, novel, essay • Spouses — Alan Cote • Children — 2 • Relatives — Robert Gorham Davis (father) Hope Hale Davis (mother) Claudia Cockburn (half-sister)

Davis was born in Northampton, Massachusetts, on July 15, 1947. She is the daughter of Robert Gorham Davis, a critic and professor of English, and Hope Hale Davis, a short-story writer, teacher, and memoirist. Davis initially studied music, first piano, then violin, which was her first love. On becoming a writer, Davis has said, "I was probably always headed to being a writer, even though that wasn't my first love. I guess I must have always wanted to write in some part of me or I wouldn't have done it." From fifth to eighth grade, she attended The Brearley School in New York City. She attended high school at The Putney School, graduating in 1965. She studied at Barnard College, and at that time she mostly wrote poetry. In 1974, Davis married Paul Auster, with whom she had a son named Daniel (1977–2022). Auster and Davis later divorced; Davis is now married to the artist Alan Cote, with whom she has another son, Theo Cote. She is a professor emerita at the University at Albany, SUNY, and was a Lillian Vernon Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at New York University in 2012.

Davis has published six collections of fiction, including The Thirteenth Woman and Other Stories (1976) and Break It Down (1986), a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award. Her most recent collections were Varieties of Disturbance, a finalist for the National Book Award published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2007, and Can't and Won't (2013). The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis (2009) contains all her short fiction up to 2008. Davis has also translated Proust, Flaubert, Blanchot, Foucault, Michel Butor, Michel Leiris, Pierre Jean Jouve and other French writers, as well as Belgian novelist Conrad Detrez and the Dutch writer A. L. Snijders. She has written one novel, The End of the Story, which was published in 1995 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

• The Thirteenth Woman and Other Stories, Living Hand, 1976 * * * • (novel) * * * * * • (republished in Can't and Won't) • Lydia Davis: Documenta Series 078. Hatje Cantz. 2012. • (co-written with Eliot Weinberger) * * * * • Into the Weeds. Yale University Press, 2025.

* * * *

* * * • Attilio Colombo (1979). Fantastic Photographs. Translator Lydia Davis. Pantheon Books. * • (Davis translated the 19-page afterword by Maurice Blanchot, "Joubert et l'espace.") • Conrad Detrez (1984). A Weed for Burning. Translator Lydia Davis. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. • Michel Butor (1986). The Spirit of Mediterranean Places. Translator Lydia Davis. Marlboro Press. • Conrad Detrez (1986). Zone of Fire. Translator Lydia Davis. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. * • Maurice Blanchot (1987). The Last Man. Translator Lydia Davis. Columbia University Press. * • Michel Leiris (1989). Brisées: Broken Branches. Translator Lydia Davis. North Point Press. * * • Michel Leiris (1991) The Rules of the Game: Scratches. Translator Lydia Davis. Paragon House. • Pierre Jean Jouve (1993). Hélène. Translator Lydia Davis. Marlboro Press. • Michel Leiris (1997) The Rules of the Game: Scraps. Translator Lydia Davis. Johns Hopkins University Press. • Michel Leiris (2017) The Rules of the Game: Fibrils. Translator Lydia Davis. Yale University Press. * * * * * • Snijders, A.L. (2021). Night Train. Translated by Lydia Davis. New Directions.

Lydia Davis is recorded as linguist, translator, writer, university teacher and novelist.