Ottessa Moshfegh
American author (born 1981)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ottessa Charlotte Moshfegh (/oʊˈtɛsə ˈmɒʃfɛɡ/;[1][2] born May 20, 1981) is an American author, novelist and screenwriter.[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.
May 20, 1981
- Novelist
- writer
Brown University (MFA)
Ottessa Moshfegh | |
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Moshfegh at the 2015 Texas Book Festival | |
| Born | Ottessa Charlotte Moshfegh May 20, 1981 Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. |
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| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Barnard College (BA) Brown University (MFA) |
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| Notable works | Eileen My Year of Rest and Relaxation |
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| Website | |
| ottessathisottessathat | |
Early life and education
Moshfegh was born in 1981 and raised in Boston, Massachusetts.[5] Her mother was Croatian and her father an Iranian Jew[6][7] and both were musicians who taught at the New England Conservatory of Music. As a child, Moshfegh learned to play piano and clarinet.[4]
Moshfegh attended the Commonwealth School in Boston[8] and earned a BA in English from Barnard College in 2002.[9] In 2011, she completed an MFA in Literary Arts at Brown University,[9] where she also taught undergraduates, including Antonia Angress.[10] From 2013 to 2015, Moshfegh was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in fiction at Stanford University.[11][12]
Career
After college, Moshfegh moved to China, where she taught English and worked in a punk bar.[4] In her mid-twenties, she relocated to New York City, working for Overlook Press and later as an assistant to Jean Stein. After contracting cat-scratch fever, she left the city and pursued an MFA at Brown University.[4] During those years, she supported herself by selling vintage clothing, which she has described as mostly "tea dresses."[13]
Works
In 2014, Fence Books published Moshfegh's novella McGlue, the first winner of the Fence Modern Prize in Prose.[14] In August 2015, Penguin Press published her first full-length novel, Eileen, which received favorable reviews[15][16] and was shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize.[17] In Eileen, the protagonist and narrator recounts a series of events from her youth in a Massachusetts town she calls "X-ville". At the start of the novel, she works as a secretary at a local juvenile prison while living with and caring for her abusive father, a retired police officer struggling with alcoholism and paranoia. As the story continues, the circumstances that led her to leave X-ville are 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 a 15-month period starting in mid-June 2000.[19] Recently graduated and ambivalently mourning her parents' deaths, she quits her job as a gallerist and embarks on a yearlong plan to sleep, aided by sleeping pills and other medications prescribed by a dubious psychiatrist.[19]
Also in 2018, Moshfegh wrote a piece for Granta in which she recounted an experience with a much older male writer when she was 17 years old.[20] She is a frequent contributor to the Paris Review, having published eight stories in the journal since 2012.[21][22] In 2020, Vintage published her third novel, Death in Her Hands,[23] which Moshfegh has called "a loneliness story".[11]
In 2021, Moshfegh's short story "My New Novel" was published as a stand-alone artbook by Picture Books, an imprint of Gagosian. The book features a foldout painting by Issy Wood illustrating "the most directly surreal part of the story".[24] In 2022, Penguin Press published Moshfegh's fourth novel, Lapvona, which follows Marek, the abused son of a shepherd, along with other characters from the fictional medieval fiefdom of Lapvona.[25]
Moshfegh co-wrote the 2022 drama film Causeway with Luke Goebel and Elizabeth Sanders.[26] It premiered at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival.[27]
Personal life
Moshfegh was married to the writer Luke B. Goebel, whom she met during an interview.[28] As of 2020, they were living in Pasadena, California.[29] She 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.[30] In 2026, Moshfegh announced she and Goebel were separated.[31]
Awards and honors
- 2013–15 Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University[12]
- 2013 Plimpton Prize for Fiction from The Paris Review for her story "Bettering Myself"[21]
- 2014 Believer Book Award winner for McGlue[32]
- 2016 MacDowell Colony Fellowship[33]
- 2016 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for Eileen[34]
- 2016 Man Booker Prize (shortlist) for Eileen
- 2018 The Story Prize finalist for Homesick for Another World
Bibliography
Novels
- Eileen (2015)
- My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)
- Death in Her Hands (2020)
- Lapvona (2022)
Short fiction
Novellas
- McGlue (2014)
- My New Novel (2021)
Filmography
- Causeway (2022; co-written with Luke Goebel & Elizabeth Sanders)
- Eileen (2023; based on her novel; co-written with Luke Goebel)
- The Three Incestuous Sisters (TBA; co-written with Alice Rohrwacher)
