Lydia Kiesling
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Lydia Kiesling is an American author and literary critic. Her debut novel, The Golden State, was published in September 2018 by MCD Books, a division of Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.[1] From 2016 to 2019 she was the editor of the San Francisco-based literary magazine The Millions.[2]
The Golden State follows a new mother, Daphne, whose Turkish husband, ensnarled in visa complications, is unable to return to the US; overwhelmed by the demands of parenthood, Daphne takes leave from a bureaucratic office job at a large university to go on a road trip to rural Northern California with her daughter.[3] Literary critics have described the book as a subversion of traditional American road trip tropes in literary narrative, as well as a "journey in the visceral and material realities of motherhood" (Sarah Blackwood, The New Yorker).[4][5] The book was long-listed for the 2018 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize.[6] It also earned Kiesling acclaim from the National Book Foundation, which named her one of their "5 Under 35," a recognition for debut writers.[7][8]
