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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91/92: notes on a Parisian commute (Semiotext(e)/Fugitives) and the UK translator of Simone de Beauvoir's previously unpublished novel, The Inseparables (Vintage).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...

‘Ich bin einer,’ I say when my turn comes I am one   I’ve been here before, outside this colossal power station in Friedrichshain, just over the Spree in the old East, very near to where the Berlin Wall once stood On previous occasions I queued with friends, the first time for three hours on a balmy Saturday night, which also happened to be the club’s birthday party I got in just as the sun was coming up The second time for forty minutes in midwinter, the temperature a bone-throbbing -11 Today I’m acting like a Berliner and doing it solo on an indifferent Sunday in April   I’m not here to take drugs, or get drunk, I’m not really looking to hook up; in fact, once I get in, if you dance too close to me I’ll probably move I’m here as a 45-year-old woman, to be on my own, surrounded by techno music played on one of the best sound systems in the world, the harder and louder the better   The building towers over us, monolithic concrete and steel, graffiti covering the bottom floors It’s getting on for 3 p m and there’s about a half-hour queue leading up to the entrance Most of them are male: one mixed group of hopeful tourists who get refused; two thickly bearded men who have obviously spent last night hooking up with each other They have the kinetics of recent sex in the way they touch each other and shimmy to the muffled beat, which gets louder as we approach the door In the final few metres nobody speaks We’re within range of the bouncers now and according to the websites that give advice on how to get in, drawing attention to yourself by being too loud will

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...

READ NEXT

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June 2014

Hoarseness: A Legend of Contemporary Cairo

Youssef Rakha

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June 2014

U. Mubarak It kind of grows out of traffic. The staccato hiss of an exhaust pipe begins to sound like...

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Issue No. 20

Editorial

The Editors

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Issue No. 20

    As a bookish schoolchild in Galilee, the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish was invited to compose, and read...

Interview

March 2017

Interview with Lidija Dimkovska

Sara Nović

Interview

March 2017

I met Lidija Dimkovska at the Twin Cities Book Festival in October, fleetingly, and completely by accident. I had...

 

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