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Lauren Elkin
Lauren Elkin is most recently the author of No. 91/92: notes on a Parisian commute (Semiotext(e)/Fugitives) and the UK translator of Simone de Beauvoir's previously unpublished novel, The Inseparables (Vintage). Her previous book Flâneuse: Women Walk the City (Chatto/FSG) was a finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, a New York Times Notable Book of 2017, and a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. Her essays have appeared in Granta, the London Review of Books, Harper’s, the New York Times, and Frieze, among others. Her next book, Art Monsters, will be out in July 2023 (Chatto/FSG). She lives in London.

Articles Available Online


Maria Gainza’s ‘Optic Nerve’

Book Review

May 2019

Lauren Elkin

Book Review

May 2019

In his foreword to A Thousand Plateaus, on the pleasures of philosophy, and of Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy in particular, Brian Massumi writes:  ...

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Issue No. 8

Barking From the Margins: On écriture féminine

Lauren Elkin

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Issue No. 8

 I. Two moments in May May 2, 2011. The novelists Siri Hustvedt and Céline Curiol are giving a talk...

 ‘So I turned around for an instant to look at what my field of vision onto the sea had not offered up: the heavy grey mass where traces of planks lined up along the inclined ramp like a tiny staircase I got up and decided to have a look around this fortification as if I had seen it for the first time, with its embrasure flush with the sand, behind the protective screen, looking out onto the Breton port, aiming today at inoffensive bathers, its rear defence with a staggered entrance and its dark interior in the blinding light of the gun’s opening toward the sea’ – Paul Virilio, Bunker Archaeology   It is October 2010 and I am in the kitchen of an old house in Sussex From the kitchen, a door leads to the hallway Suddenly the door begins to sway from side to side At first, I think nothing of it and put it down to a breeze from another room But then the swaying became more deliberate, as if a presence were trying to communicate from afar The door moves to one end, pauses for a second, and then proceeds to return to the other side To and fro it moves, until suddenly, and without warning, it stops As I stand to investigate, an iridescent light fills the hallway, and a tall silhouette clad in black slowly crosses the landing before disappearing into the brick wall In response, the skin on my body becomes clammy with anxiety, while the hairs beginning at the base of my head and extending to the lower reach of my neck recoil, as if they had grasped some kind of horror that I was still in the process of experiencing One minute later, I am on the street Disturbed by the vision, I look at the house from the vantage point of the outside If the figure has come to me in a moment of private intimacy, then I am sure it would not follow me down the stairs and onto the other side of the street, and thereby expose

Contributor

August 2014

Lauren Elkin

Contributor

August 2014

Lauren Elkin is most recently the author of No. 91/92: notes on a Parisian commute (Semiotext(e)/Fugitives) and the UK...

The End of Francophonie: The Politics of French Literature

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Issue No. 2

Lauren Elkin

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Issue No. 2

I. We were a couple of minutes late for the panel we’d hoped to attend. The doors were closed and there was a surly-looking...

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fiction

October 2012

Girl on a Bridge

Wayne Holloway

fiction

October 2012

Pirajoux… The middle of a hot endless summer, driving on the A39 through an as always empty central France,...

Interview

Issue No. 4

Interview with Ahdaf Soueif

Jacques Testard

Interview

Issue No. 4

In 1999, Ahdaf Soueif’s second novel, The Map of Love, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, eventually losing out...

poetry

December 2011

Sonic Peace

Minashita Kiriu

TR. Jeffrey Angles

poetry

December 2011

Beneath the sun My interchangeable routines Are formed from superfluous things Managing this place is A metal will, swelling...

 

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