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91/92: notes on a Parisian commute (Semiotext(e)/Fugitives) and the UK translator of Simone de Beauvoir's previously unpublished novel, The Inseparables (Vintage).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

The guy looked disappointed when he saw me My one sales point is that I’m young, but my eyelids are so puffy they look like caterpillars, and my lips are pale and kind of caterpillary too, and so are my fingers and toes, so I’m pretty much caterpillars all over, and the problem was that the guy was fairly young himself Not as young as me – I’m only 20 – but late twenties at most, which is about the same or a little older than my friend’s brother, who drives a Soarer and got arrested for possession of crank and who I had sex with a couple of times, but it was on bare tatami mats and the mats made a creepy-looking imprint on my ass   ‘Good evening, I’m from the Snake Pit,’ I said, and the guy laughed and said, ‘“Snake Pit” – sounds like a gym for pro wrestlers’ He had a very gentlemanly-sounding sort of laugh, which put me at ease in a way, but then again it’s always the ‘sophisticated’ ones who want you to stick your tongue in their ass or smooth out the wrinkles in their ball sack and lick it, stuff like that, which I hate, so I acted very shy when I walked in, like it was my first time to do this, but I couldn’t tell if the guy bought it or not It seemed like he was experienced at this kind of thing, though, and it was one of the best hotels in the city, and the room had this giant bed, and I was thinking, Where does a young fucker like you get off, staying in such an expensive place?   While I was calling my office to tell them I’d arrived at the appointment, the guy took a bottle of wine from this ice bucket that looked like a robot’s head and popped the cork and poured himself a glass, and he seemed right at home, like he did this sort of stuff all the time I had some wine too, and I was thinking it wasn’t as good

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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poetry

Issue No. 19

Two Poems

Sophie Robinson

poetry

Issue No. 19

sweet sweet agency   the candy here is hard & filled & there is nothing i love more than...

poetry

May 2013

Flatlands

Saskia Hamilton

poetry

May 2013

Horses and geese in a sodden field. Solitaries with luggage on a wet platform. Postage-stamp house on a bit...

poetry

April 2012

The Disappearance

Dana Goodyear

poetry

April 2012

A yellow veil dropped down at evening, and when it lifted everyone was gone. Good mothers fled their young...

 

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