Episode 6: Lydia Davis

Pod45 has been on a short hiatus over the summer but we are delighted to be back and delighted to have you back with us.

Today our discussion takes us to a cluster we published earlier in the summer, at the very end of June, on the writer and translator Lydia Davis. That cluster is edited by Julie Tanner and features, alongside a wonderful range of responses to Davis’s work, previously unseen journal excerpts from Davis herself, which we were honoured to be given by Davis to publish.

As Julie suggests in her introduction to the cluster, there is a seeming discrepancy between what we might call Davis’s cult popularity and what remains a relative lack of scholarly attention paid to her. As Julie puts it, “Davis is strikingly singular, but it is perhaps the plurality of genres and modalities that repels categories, movements, and, often, syllabi.” Yet, to quote Julie again, “though a writers' writer to some, Davis is a readers' writer for us all.” That, I think, is what the discussion you’re about to hear emphasizes most.

For this discussion,  Contemporaries co-editor Francisco Robles sat down with cluster editor Julie Tanner, alongside cluster contributors Jonathan Evans, Alice Blackhurst, and Lola Boorman.

You can find the Lydia Davis cluster at post45.org/contemporaries now, and you can follow Contemporaries on Twitter at @AtPost45.

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