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Ottessa Moshfegh

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Ottessa Moshfegh
Moshfegh at the 2015 Texas Book Festival.
Moshfegh at the 2015 Texas 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 (/oʊˈtɛsə ˈmɒʃfɛɡ/;[1][2] born May 20, 1981) is an American author and novelist.[3] Her debut novel, Eileen (2015), won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and was a fiction finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.[4] Moshfegh's subsequent novels include My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Death in Her Hands, and Lapvona.

Early life and education

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

She attended the Commonwealth School in Boston[8] and received her BA in English from Barnard College in 2002.[9] She completed an MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University in 2011.[9] During her MFA study at Brown, she taught undergraduates, including Antonia Angress, author of the 2022 novel Sirens & Muses.[10] Moshfegh was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in fiction at Stanford University from 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 for Overlook Press, and then as an assistant for Jean Stein. After contracting cat-scratch fever, she left the city and earned an MFA from Brown 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 novella McGlue. McGlue was the first recipient of the Fence Modern Prize in Prose.[14]

In August 2015, Penguin Press published Moshfegh's novel Eileen. It received positive reviews.[15][16] The book was shortlisted for the 2016 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 for Granta in 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 the Paris Review and has published six stories in the journal since 2012.[21]

In August 2020, Vintage published 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, medieval fiefdom of Lapvona.[23]

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

Moshfegh has cited the poet and novelist Charles Bukowski as 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 in Pasadena, 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[a]
  • "Medicine", Vice, December 1, 2007
  • "Disgust" (alternately titled "Mr Wu"), The Paris Review, No. 202, Fall 2012
  • "Bettering Myself", The Paris Review, No. 204 Spring 2013
  • "Malibu", Vice, July 3, 2013
  • "The Weirdos", The Paris Review, No. 206, Fall 2013
  • "A Dark and Winding Road", The Paris Review, No. 207, Winter 2013
  • "No Place for Good People", The Paris Review, No. 209, Summer 2014
  • "Slumming", The Paris Review, No. 211, Winter 2014
  • "Nothing Ever Happens Here", Granta, Issue 131, Spring 2015
  • "The Surrogate", Vice, June 5, 2015
  • "Dancing in the Moonlight", The Paris Review, No. 214 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
  • "Brom", Granta, Issue 139, 2017
  • "The Pornographers", Vice, March 26, 2017
  • "I Was a Public Schooler", The Paris Review, No. 233, Summer 2020
  • "The Imitations", Apartamento, No. 27, May 17, 2021

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
  1. ^ Short stories unless otherwise noted.

References

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  1. ^ "Ottessa Moshfegh's 3 Favorite Wanderers and Weirdos". The Dinner Part Download. American Public Media. February 10, 2017. Retrieved December 2, 2022.
  2. ^ "Ottessa Moshfegh". 10 Things That Scare Me. WNYC Studios. December 4, 2018. Retrieved December 2, 2022.
  3. ^ Novak, Joanna (November 3, 2014). "Ottessa Moshfegh Is the Next Big Thing, and Here Are 7 Reasons Why". Bustle. Retrieved April 13, 2015.
  4. ^ a b c d Levy, Ariel. "Ottessa Moshfegh's Otherworldly Fiction". The New Yorker. Retrieved July 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. Retrieved June 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. Retrieved August 15, 2015.
  8. ^ Sullivan, James (January 24, 2017). "The moral to her stories is... not there". The Boston Globe. Retrieved May 18, 2021.
  9. ^ a b "Ottessa Moshfegh | Literary Arts Program". www.brown.edu. Archived from the original on May 19, 2021. Retrieved May 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. ^ a b Christensen, Lauren (April 16, 2020). "Ottessa Moshfegh Is Only Human". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved May 18, 2021.
  12. ^ a b "Former Stegner Fellows | Creative Writing Program". stanford.edu. Retrieved October 18, 2023.
  13. ^ Phillips, Kaitlin (July 19, 2018). "Ottessa Moshfegh Plays to Win". The Cut. Retrieved April 29, 2022.
  14. ^ "McGlue Otessa Moshfeg | Fence Books". www.fenceportal.org. Retrieved May 19, 2021.
  15. ^ "Eileen: A Novel". Penguin Press.
  16. ^ King, Lily (August 14, 2015). "'Eileen,' by Ottessa Moshfegh". The New York Times. Retrieved August 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. ^ a b "My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh – caustic and acute". the Guardian. July 22, 2018. Retrieved May 18, 2021.
  20. ^ "Jailbait". Granta Magazine. August 9, 2018. Retrieved September 6, 2019.
  21. ^ a b Stein, Lorin (October 28, 2014). "Ottessa Moshfegh". BOMB Magazine. Retrieved October 18, 2023.
  22. ^ "Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh review – meandering murder mystery". the Guardian. October 9, 2020. Retrieved May 18, 2021.
  23. ^ "Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh". Kirkus Reviews. March 30, 2022. Retrieved November 26, 2022.
  24. ^ "Causeway". Writers Guild of America East. Retrieved August 15, 2022.
  25. ^ Brunner, Raven (October 7, 2022). "'Causeway' on Apple TV+: Trailer, Cast, Premiere Date and More". Decider. Retrieved April 12, 2024.
  26. ^ "Ottessa Moshfegh | Biography, Books, Eileen, & Facts | Britannica". www.britannica.com. March 23, 2024. Retrieved April 23, 2024.
  27. ^ Phillips, Kaitlin (July 19, 2018). "Ottessa Moshfegh Plays to Win". The Cut. Retrieved March 2, 2019.
  28. ^ "You're Probably Wrong About Ottessa Moshfegh".
  29. ^ "The Fence Modern Prize in Prose". Past winners. Archived from the original on November 24, 2015. Retrieved November 23, 2015.
  30. ^ "The Believer Book Award". The Believer. November 2015. Retrieved November 23, 2015.
  31. ^ Mark Shanahan (March 16, 2016). "Newton's Ottessa Moshfegh wins 2016 PEN/Hemingway Award". Boston Globe. Retrieved June 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. ISBN 978-1-951449-24-7. OCLC 1306221572.
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