Catherine Lacey is the author of four books: Nobody Is Ever Missing, The Answers, Certain American States and Pew. Her work has appeared in Harper’s, Vogue, the New York Times and elsewhere. She is a Granta Best of Young American Novelist, a Guggenheim Fellow and the winner of the 2021 New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award. ‘Biography of X’ is an extract from her novel of the same title, forthcoming in 2023 from Granta Books in the UK and Farrar, Straus & Giroux in the US.
‘And each time I hit the tarmac I had this terrible feeling that the trip I’d just taken had never even happened, that I’d spent hundreds for a memory I could barely recall.’
Catherine Lacey shares five things she’s reading, watching and thinking about right now.
‘The possibility that I’d unwittingly tapped into her fate and used it as fuel for a story sickened me.’
‘Everyone should just sit very still until they reach the calmer waters of later-young-adulthood, that promised land of lowered expectations.’
Catherine Lacey discuses voice, characterization and the minute details that bring a story to life
‘It's uncomfortable, at times, to be alive, so I see no reason why a voice in fiction shouldn't be also.’
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