Lucy Ives's guest appearances

Lucy Ives

Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

LA Review of Books

LARB Radio Hour

Skylight Books Podcast Series

Nawaaz Ahmed

Lauren Oyler

Matthew Specktor

Hanif Abdurraqib

Ben Marcus

Janet Fitch

Sarah Schulman

Laila Lalami

Eve Babitz

Kristen Arnett

Ariana Reines

Tommy Pico

Alex Ross

Tom Lutz

Melissa Anderson

OwlTail

Novelist, short story writer, poet, and critic Lucy Ives’ new novel Life Is Everywhere has been heralded by some of our most formally inventive and playful writers today, from Jesse Ball to Alejandro Zambra to Percival Everett. No wonder as Life Is Everywhere, a book that contains other books, is hard to categorize. Some have called the structure like that of Matryoshka dolls but its inspiration comes directly from an essay by Ursula K. Le Guin called “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction,” an essay that reaches toward a different future for the novel. In Ives’ book we  spend just as much time reading the things inside our protagonist’s bag as we do with the protagonist herself. At any moment what we are reading might seem like a #MeToo novel, a book of fictional history, a book of real history, a fantastical adventure of magical statuary, an autofiction, or a “systems novel,” one that looks at how individuals act and are acted upon within structures and institutions, whether a marriage or a university. As Percival Everett says “If Lucy Ives is as smart as her novel Life Is Everywhere, then I am in complete awe. . . . How many books in one and yet one book. This is great writing.” And Jesse Ball aptly adds about this erudite and sly invention, Ives “slays enemy and friend alike.” For the bonus audio Lucy Ives contributes a reading of a five-part writing exercise called “Exercises for Writing from Memory.” This joins contributions from writers as varied as Ted Chiang, N.K. Jemisin, Dionne Brand, Arthur Sze, Max Porter, and more. To learn about how to subscribe to the bonus audio and the other many potential benefits of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener supporter head over to the show’s Patreon page. Finally here is the Bookshop for today’s conversation.   The post Lucy Ives : Life Is Everywhere appeared first on Tin House.

Novelist, short story writer, poet, and critic Lucy Ives’ new novel Life Is Everywhere has been heralded by some of our most formally inventive and playful writers today, from Jesse Ball to Alejandro Zambra to Percival Everett. No wonder as Life Is Everywhere, a book that contains other books, is hard to categorize. Some have called the structure like that of Matryoshka dolls but its inspiration comes directly from an essay by Ursula K. Le Guin called “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction,” an essay that reaches toward a different future for the novel. In Ives’ book we  spend just as much time reading the things inside our protagonist’s bag as we do with the protagonist herself. At any moment what we are reading might seem like a #MeToo novel, a book of fictional history, a book of real history, a fantastical adventure of magical statuary, an autofiction, or a “systems novel,” one that looks at how individuals act and are acted upon within structures and institutions, whether a marriage or a university. As Percival Everett says “If Lucy Ives is as smart as her novel Life Is Everywhere, then I am in complete awe. . . . How many books in one and yet one book. This is great writing.” And Jesse Ball aptly adds about this erudite and sly invention, Ives “slays enemy and friend alike.” For the bonus audio Lucy Ives contributes a reading of a five-part writing exercise called “Exercises for Writing from Memory.” This joins contributions from writers as varied as Ted Chiang, N.K. Jemisin, Dionne Brand, Arthur Sze, Max Porter, and more. To learn about how to subscribe to the bonus audio and the other many potential benefits of joining the Between the Covers community as a listener supporter head over to the show’s <a href="http://patreon.com/betweenthecovers" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Patreon page</a>. Finally here is the <a href="https://bookshop.org/lists/books-for-lucy-ives-conversation" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Bookshop</a> for today’s conversation. The post <a href="https://tinhouse.com/podcast/lucy-ives-life-is-everywhere/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Lucy Ives : Life Is Everywhere</a> appeared first on <a href="https://tinhouse.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Tin House</a>.

Lucy Ives : Life Is Everywhere

Olivia Laing

Kate and Medaya talk to the critic and writer Olivia Laing about her new collection of essays Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency. The three discuss the role of art in dark times, Olivia’s environmental activist youth and what she turns to during a crisis. Then, Lucy Ives joins the hosts to discuss the legacy of the artist, architect and writer Madeline Gins, whose work was recently collected into a comprehensive reader titled The Saddest Thing is That I Have Had to Use Words.

Kate and Medaya talk to the critic and writer Olivia Laing about her new collection of essays Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency. The three discuss the role of art in dark times, Olivia’s environmental activist youth and what she turns to during a crisis. Then, Lucy Ives joins the hosts to discuss the legacy of the artist, architect and writer Madeline Gins, whose work was recently collected into a comprehensive reader titled The Saddest Thing is That I Have Had to Use Words.

Art in an Emergency: Talking to Olivia Laing and Lucy Ives

Amina Cain

(Podcast editor's note: The Q&amp;A segment for this event took place off-mic for the most part and, despite our best efforts, the audio is difficult to hear at times.) A witty, urbane, and sometimes shocking debut novel, set in a hallowed New York museum, in which a co-worker’s disappearance and a mysterious map change a life forever Stella Krakus, a curator at Manhattan’s renowned Central Museum of Art, is having the roughest week in approximately ever. Her soon-to-be ex-husband (the perfectly awful Whit Ghiscolmbe) is stalking her, a workplace romance with “a fascinating, hyper-rational narcissist” is in freefall, and a beloved colleague, Paul, has gone missing. Strange things are afoot: CeMArt’s current exhibit is sponsored by a Belgian multinational that wants to take over the world’s water supply, she unwittingly stars in a viral video that’s making the rounds, and her mother–the imperious, impossibly glamorous Caro–wants to have lunch. It’s almost more than she can overanalyze.  But the appearance of a mysterious map, depicting a 19th-century utopian settlement, sends Stella–a dogged expert in American graphics and fluidomanie (don’t ask)–on an all-consuming research mission. As she teases out the links between a haunting poem, several unusual novels, a counterfeiting scheme, and one of the museum’s colorful early benefactors, she discovers the unbearable secret that Paul’s been keeping, and charts a course out of the chaos of her own life. Pulsing with neurotic humor and dagger-sharp prose, Impossible Views of the World is a dazzling debut novel about how to make it through your early thirties with your brain and heart intact. Praise for Impossible Views of the World “An art historical mystery that will interest fans of Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, with a narrator equal parts intellectual, ironic, and cool…Scintillating…A diversion and a pleasure, this novel leaves you feeling smarter and hipper than you were before.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred) “Stella is like Hannah Horvath from Girls—smart, with an equal tendency toward snark and introspection—living in From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. The novel sends up the museum world, with pretentious art folks courting corporate dollars and the usual office politics, but maintains a sense of something larger, even magical, working in the background.”—Booklist “The charm and energy of Impossible Views of the World rest in Ives’s uncanny eye for the subtle tells of romance, the idiosyncrasies of the NYC young, and the details of 19th-century furniture and art…A clever curatorial mystery, a love-gone-wrong rom-com or a sharp-witted story of a young New York woman, Impossible Views of the World is way more fun than a rainy afternoon in the American Objects wing of a cavernous museum.” —Shelf Awareness “[A] smart and singular debut novel…Ives maximizes her story’s humor with subtlety; a line here and there is enough to call attention to the absurdity of, for instance, the museum’s corporate benefactor’s attempt to secure the world’s water rights. She also isn’t afraid to make her heroine unlikable, which works in the novel’s favor…odd and thoroughly satisfying.” — Publishers Weekly  “I first knew Lucy Ives’s work as a poet, and to have her prose is a gift, too. The detailed novel she’s built with such authenticity, wit, and feeling is remarkable for its vitality, insights, and lyrical view of a changing world.” — Hilton Als, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of White Girls “This book was written by a rampaging, mirthful genius. It stands before me like a runestone, magical, mysterious—an esoteric juggernaut masquerading as a ‘debut novel.’ During the days I spent reading it, I said goodbye to all else.” — Elizabeth McKenzie, author of The Portable Veblen “There are abundant pleasures to be found in Lucy Ives’s debut novel about art curation, corporate control, and utopia (among many other subjects and digressions), but the best is the poetic, elegant intelligence of its narration, vocalized by Stella Krakus, whose every sentence wryly climbs from the ridiculous to the sublime.”  — Teddy Wayne, author of Loner and The Love Song of Jonny Valentine “Lucy Ives, a deeply smart and painstakingly elegant writer, wins the prize with this intricate, droll, stylish book—at once a mystery novel, a romantic comedy, a tricky essay on aesthetics, an exposé of art-world foibles, and a diary of emotional distress.  With sharp phrases, uncanny plot-turns, and mise-en-abymes galore, this mesmerizing tale radiates the haute irreality of Last Year at Marienbad and the dreamy claustrophobia of The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, this time for adults only.” —Wayne Koestenbaum, author of My 1980s and Other Essays Lucy Ives is the author of several books of poetry and short prose, including The Hermit and the novella nineties. Her writing has appeared in Artforum, Lapham’s Quarterly, and at newyorker.com. For five years she was an editor with the online magazine Triple Canopy. A graduate of Harvard and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature from New York University. She teaches at the Pratt Institute and is currently editing a collection of writings by the artist Madeline Gins. Amina Cain is the author of the short story collection Creature, out with Dorothy, a Publishing Project. Her stories and essays have appeared in BOMB, n+1, The Paris Review Daily, and Full Stop, among other places. She lives in Los AngelesEvent date: Wednesday, August 30, 2017 - 7:30pm

(Podcast editor's note: The Q&amp;A segment for this event took place off-mic for the most part and, despite our best efforts, the audio is difficult to hear at times.) A witty, urbane, and sometimes shocking debut novel, set in a hallowed New York museum, in which a co-worker’s disappearance and a mysterious map change a life forever Stella Krakus, a curator at Manhattan’s renowned Central Museum of Art, is having the roughest week in approximately ever. Her soon-to-be ex-husband (the perfectly awful Whit Ghiscolmbe) is stalking her, a workplace romance with “a fascinating, hyper-rational narcissist” is in freefall, and a beloved colleague, Paul, has gone missing. Strange things are afoot: CeMArt’s current exhibit is sponsored by a Belgian multinational that wants to take over the world’s water supply, she unwittingly stars in a viral video that’s making the rounds, and her mother–the imperious, impossibly glamorous Caro–wants to have lunch. It’s almost more than she can overanalyze.  But the appearance of a mysterious map, depicting a 19th-century utopian settlement, sends Stella–a dogged expert in American graphics and fluidomanie (don’t ask)–on an all-consuming research mission. As she teases out the links between a haunting poem, several unusual novels, a counterfeiting scheme, and one of the museum’s colorful early benefactors, she discovers the unbearable secret that Paul’s been keeping, and charts a course out of the chaos of her own life. Pulsing with neurotic humor and dagger-sharp prose, Impossible Views of the World is a dazzling debut novel about how to make it through your early thirties with your brain and heart intact. Praise for Impossible Views of the World “An art historical mystery that will interest fans of Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, with a narrator equal parts intellectual, ironic, and cool…Scintillating…A diversion and a pleasure, this novel leaves you feeling smarter and hipper than you were before.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred) “Stella is like Hannah Horvath from Girls—smart, with an equal tendency toward snark and introspection—living in From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. The novel sends up the museum world, with pretentious art folks courting corporate dollars and the usual office politics, but maintains a sense of something larger, even magical, working in the background.”—Booklist “The charm and energy of Impossible Views of the World rest in Ives’s uncanny eye for the subtle tells of romance, the idiosyncrasies of the NYC young, and the details of 19th-century furniture and art…A clever curatorial mystery, a love-gone-wrong rom-com or a sharp-witted story of a young New York woman, Impossible Views of the World is way more fun than a rainy afternoon in the American Objects wing of a cavernous museum.” —Shelf Awareness “[A] smart and singular debut novel…Ives maximizes her story’s humor with subtlety; a line here and there is enough to call attention to the absurdity of, for instance, the museum’s corporate benefactor’s attempt to secure the world’s water rights. She also isn’t afraid to make her heroine unlikable, which works in the novel’s favor…odd and thoroughly satisfying.” — Publishers Weekly  “I first knew Lucy Ives’s work as a poet, and to have her prose is a gift, too. The detailed novel she’s built with such authenticity, wit, and feeling is remarkable for its vitality, insights, and lyrical view of a changing world.” — Hilton Als, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of White Girls “This book was written by a rampaging, mirthful genius. It stands before me like a runestone, magical, mysterious—an esoteric juggernaut masquerading as a ‘debut novel.’ During the days I spent reading it, I said goodbye to all else.” — Elizabeth McKenzie, author of The Portable Veblen “There are abundant pleasures to be found in Lucy Ives’s debut novel about art curation, corporate control, and utopia (among many other subjects and digressions), but the best is the poetic, elegant intelligence of its narration, vocalized by Stella Krakus, whose every sentence wryly climbs from the ridiculous to the sublime.”  — Teddy Wayne, author of Loner and The Love Song of Jonny Valentine “Lucy Ives, a deeply smart and painstakingly elegant writer, wins the prize with this intricate, droll, stylish book—at once a mystery novel, a romantic comedy, a tricky essay on aesthetics, an exposé of art-world foibles, and a diary of emotional distress.  With sharp phrases, uncanny plot-turns, and mise-en-abymes galore, this mesmerizing tale radiates the haute irreality of Last Year at Marienbad and the dreamy claustrophobia of The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, this time for adults only.” —Wayne Koestenbaum, author of My 1980s and Other Essays Lucy Ives is the author of several books of poetry and short prose, including The Hermit and the novella nineties. Her writing has appeared in Artforum, Lapham’s Quarterly, and at <a href="http://newyorker.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">newyorker.com</a>. For five years she was an editor with the online magazine Triple Canopy. A graduate of Harvard and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature from New York University. She teaches at the Pratt Institute and is currently editing a collection of writings by the artist Madeline Gins. Amina Cain is the author of the short story collection Creature, out with Dorothy, a Publishing Project. Her stories and essays have appeared in BOMB, n+1, The Paris Review Daily, and Full Stop, among other places. She lives in Los AngelesEvent date:  Wednesday, August 30, 2017 - 7:30pm

LUCY IVES READS FROM HER NOVEL IMPOSSIBLE VIEWS OF THE WORLD WITH AMINA CAIN

Author Lucy Ives joins co-hosts Kate Wolf and Medaya Ocher to discuss Impossible Views of the World, her first novel, which centers on the life of a curator working in New York's greatest museum. The ensuing conversation revolves around the Ives' inspiration for writing such a multi-faceted work: part character-driven social satire, part literary pastiche, it's also an intellectual mystery novel rife with artistic and philosophical resonance.  Plus, poet Imani Tolliver, author of Runaway: A Memoir in Verse, returns to recommend Roxane Gay's Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body.

Lucy Ives Impossible Views of the World; plus Roxane Gay's Hunger