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Amanda Filipacchi

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Amanda Filipacchi
Amanda Filipacchi in 2006
Amanda Filipacchi in 2006
Born (1967-10-10) October 10, 1967 (age 57)[1]
Paris, France
OccupationNovelist
NationalityAmerican, French
Period1993–present
GenreLiterary fiction
Literary movementPostmodern
ParentsDaniel Filipacchi, Sondra Peterson
Website
www.amandafilipacchi.com

Amanda Filipacchi (/fɪlɪˈpɑːkɪ/; born October 10, 1967) is an American novelist. She was born in Paris and educated in both in France and in the U.S. She is the author of four novels, Nude Men (1993), Vapor (1999), Love Creeps (2005), and The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty (2015). Her fiction has been translated into 13 languages.[2]

Early life and education

Filipacchi was born in Paris, and was educated in France (where she attended the American School of Paris in St. Cloud[3]) and in the U.S. She is the daughter of former model Sondra Peterson and Daniel Filipacchi, chairman emeritus of Hachette Filipacchi Médias.[4] She has been writing since the age of thirteen and completed three unpublished novels in her teenage years.[4] She has been living in New York since she was 17.[5] She attended Hamilton College, from which she graduated with a BA in Creative Writing. At age 20, she tried her hand at non-fiction writing at Rolling Stone magazine.[3] In 1990, Filipacchi enrolled in Columbia University's MFA fiction writing program, where she wrote a master's thesis which she later turned into her first published novel, Nude Men.[1]

Career

In 1992, when Filipacchi was 24, a time shortly before her graduation, her agent, Melanie Jackson,[1] sold Nude Men to Nan Graham at Viking Press. The novel was later translated into ten languages[6] and was anthologized in The Best American Humor 1994 (published by Simon & Schuster).[7]

Filipacchi's second and third novels, Vapor (1999) and Love Creeps (2005, a novel about obsessive love[8] and stalking respectively[9]), were also translated into multiple languages.[10] In 2005, Filipacchi was invited to participate in the 2005 Saint-Amour literary festival, a 10-city tour through Belgium.[11]

External audio
audio icon Interview with Amanda Filipacchi on Love Creeps, The Leonard Lopate Show, WNYC

Reviewers have called Filipacchi "a prodigious postfeminist talent",[12] and a "lovely comic surrealist".[13] The Boston Globe described her writing style as "reminiscent in certain ways of Muriel Spark ... brisk, witty, knowing, mischievous."[14] Love Creeps (referred to in a review by Alexis Soloski in The Village Voice as having "oddball situations and merrily acidic dialogue"[15]) was one of The Village Voice's top 25 books of the year,[16] and was included in the syllabus of a course on the comic novel in Columbia University's graduate creative writing program.[17][18]

In August 2013, Filipacchi sold her latest novel, The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty, to Norton. According to the publisher, the novel deals with two women going to elaborate lengths to find love.[19] It was named on Bustle's list of "12 of the Most Anticipated Books of 2015, aka the Titles We Can't Get Our Hands On Soon Enough" and the Huffington Post's "2015 Books We Can't Wait To Read".[20][21]

Wikipedia op-ed

Further information: Wikipedia controversies § 2013, and Criticism of Wikipedia § Gender bias

In an April 2013 op-ed for The New York Times, Filipacchi expressed concerns about sexism regarding Wikipedia's classification of American novelists, as well as female novelists from other countries, after she noticed multiple editors moving female writers out of the general category of "American novelists" and into a subcategory for "American women novelists". She described it as a "small, easily fixable thing ... that make[s] it harder and slower for women to gain equality in the literary world", and added that "[p]eople who go to Wikipedia to get ideas for whom to hire, or honor, or read, and look at that list of 'American Novelists' for inspiration ... might simply use that list without thinking twice about it."[22] The op-ed spurred an outcry from feminists and other commentators, who echoed her concerns about sexism and the perceived minimization of female novelists on the site.[23][24] Filipacchi stated in a follow-up piece that editors had targeted her Wikipedia biography page in retaliation for her criticism.[25] Andrew Leonard of Salon described this as "revenge editing" and supported his description of the event by quoting combative remarks about Filipacchi made by the primary user involved, who was later revealed to be writer Robert Clark Young.[26][27]

Filipacchi later wrote an additional article in The Atlantic, rebutting media stories that attributed the recategorization of female novelists to the work of a single editor, and listed seven different users who were responsible for recategorizing the seventeen women writers mentioned in her op-ed.[28] In July 2013, she wrote a personal essay for The Wall Street Journal, which more humorously described the aftermath of the controversy, discussing how she became engrossed in discussions on Wikipedia and criticism site Wikipediocracy.[29]

Works

Books

  • Amanda Filipacchi (1993). Nude Men. Viking/Penguin. ISBN 9780140178920.
  • Amanda Filipacchi (1999). Vapor. Carroll & Graf. ISBN 9780786706174.
  • Amanda Filipacchi (2006). Love Creeps. Macmillan. ISBN 9780312340322.
  • Amanda Filipacchi (2015). The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty. W. W. Norton. ISBN 9780393243871.

Other publications

References

  1. ^ a b c "Amanda Filipacchi", Contemporary Authors Online, Detroit: Gale, 2006
  2. ^ "Amanda Filipacchi". WorldCat. Retrieved May 27, 2013.
  3. ^ a b Ardisson, Thierry. interview Amanda Filipacchi, DailyMotion, INA.fr, putative broadcast date October 17, 2010. Retrieved June 6, 2013. See also her earlier "anti-portrait chinois" and her deft replies to Ardisson's verbal challenges.
  4. ^ a b Hoban, Phoebe (January 14, 1993). "Brief Lives: Skin Deep". New York. p. 30. Retrieved April 27, 2013.
  5. ^ ""Bio" page". amandafilipacchi.com. Retrieved April 29, 2013.
  6. ^ Including German, French, Slovak, Danish, Dutch, Turkish, Italian, Hebrew, Swedish, and Russian. "Records in Index Translationum database". Index Translationum. UNESCO. Retrieved April 28, 2013.
  7. ^ Waldoks, Moshe (1994). Best American Humor 1994. Touchstone. p. 10. ISBN 0-671-89940-6.
  8. ^ Dupont, Pepita (July 4, 2006). "Amanda Filipacchi: Deux Variations sur la Meme T'Aime". Paris Match (in French). Retrieved April 27, 2013.
  9. ^ "New & Recommended". Boston Globe. June 19, 2005. Retrieved April 27, 2013.
  10. ^ Love Creeps has been translated into French, Polish, Dutch, and Korean. Vapor was published in French, Italian, and Polish. "Records in Index Translationum database". Index Translationum. UNESCO. Retrieved April 28, 2013. Love Creeps. WorldCat. OCLC 57429819.
  11. ^ "Amanda Filipacchi. Ecrivain française". Evene. Retrieved May 27, 2013.
  12. ^ "Vapor" (unsigned review). Publishers Weekly. March 29, 1999. Retrieved April 29, 2013. Her novel showcases a prodigious postfeminist talent.
  13. ^ Sicha, Choire (April 18, 2004). "Plum's Tarts". The New York Times. Retrieved April 30, 2013.
  14. ^ "Exploring the slippery nature of desire". Boston Globe. June 12, 2005. Retrieved April 28, 2013.
  15. ^ Soloski, Alexis (May 31, 2005). "Page-Burners". The Village Voice. Retrieved April 30, 2013.
  16. ^ "Top Shelf 2005". The Village Voice. December 6, 2005. Retrieved April 28, 2013.
  17. ^ Park, Ed (May 20, 2009). "Comic Novels". Bookforum. Retrieved May 27, 2013.
  18. ^ "What Ed Park's Students Are Reading". Book Culture. March 24, 2009. Retrieved May 27, 2013.
  19. ^ Deahl, Rachel (August 26, 2013). "Book Deals: Week of August 26, 2013". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved August 26, 2013.
  20. ^ Turits, Meredith (December 15, 2014). "12 of the Most Anticipated Books of 2015, aka the Titles We Can't Get Our Hands On Soon Enough". Bustle.com. Retrieved December 16, 2014.
  21. ^ Crum, Maddie (December 10, 2014). "2015 Books We Can't Wait To Read". HuffPost. Retrieved December 16, 2014.
  22. ^ Filipacchi, Amanda (April 24, 2013). "Wikipedia's Sexism Toward Female Novelists". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved April 28, 2013.
  23. ^ Rawlinson, Kevin (April 26, 2013). "Wikipedia in sexism row after labelling Harper Lee and others 'women novelists' while men are 'American novelists'". The Independent. Archived from the original on April 30, 2013. Retrieved April 28, 2013.
  24. ^ Zandt, Deanna (April 26, 2013). "Yes, Wikipedia Is Sexist – That's Why It Needs You". Forbes. Retrieved April 28, 2013.
  25. ^ Filipacchi, Amanda (April 27, 2013). "Wikipedia's Sexism". The New York Times. Retrieved April 28, 2013.
  26. ^ Leonard, Andrew (April 30, 2013). "Wikipedia's shame". Salon. Retrieved April 30, 2013.
  27. ^ Leonard, Andrew (May 17, 2013). "Revenge, ego and the corruption of Wikipedia". Salon. Retrieved May 20, 2013.
  28. ^ Filipacchi, Amanda (April 30, 2013). "Sexism on Wikipedia Is Not the Work of 'a Single Misguided Editor'". The Atlantic. Retrieved May 3, 2013.
  29. ^ Filipacchi, Amanda (July 10, 2013). "My Strange Addiction: Wikipedia". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved July 20, 2013.
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