Kate Zambreno is an author whose novels delve into complex psychologies and societal pressures, often exploring themes of identity and artistic pursuit. Her prose is known for its introspective nature and stylistic dexterity, drawing readers into profound meditations on the nature of creation and existence. Zambreno demonstrates an unwavering interest in how women perceive and are perceived, examining these dynamics with sharp intelligence. Her writing, which navigates between fiction and essays, offers a unique and challenging reading experience.
"Drift" explores the challenges of writing and the mystery of creativity. The narrator, struggling with a long-overdue novel, navigates her neighborhood with her restless dog while connecting with fellow writers. Pregnancy brings urgency to her thoughts, leading her to find a literary form that captures the essence of feeling and existence.
Tone is a collaborative study of literary tone, exploring its implications for community, politics, and ecology.
“Kate Zambreno has invented a new form. It is a kind of absolute present, real life captured in closeup.“ —Annie Ernaux, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature From “one of our most formally ambitious writers” (Esquire), a moving account of caretaking in a time of uncertainty and loss In The Light Room, Zambreno offers her most profound and affecting work yet: a candid chronicle of life as a mother of two young daughters in a moment of profound uncertainty about public health, climate change, and the future we can expect for our children. Moving through the seasons, returning often to parks and green spaces, Zambreno captures the isolation and exhaustion of being home with a baby and a small child, but also small and transcendent moments of beauty and joy. Inspired by writers and artists ranging from Natalia Ginzburg to Joseph Cornell, Yūko Tsushima to Bernadette Mayer, Etel Adnan to David Wojnarowicz, The Light Room represents an impassioned appreciation of community and the commons, and an ecstatic engagement with the living world. How will our memories, and our children’s, be affected by this time of profound disconnection? What does it mean to bring new life, and new work, into this moment of precarity and crisis? In The Light Room, Kate Zambreno offers a vision of how to live in ways that move away from disenchantment, and toward light and possibility.
The most comprehensive survey of the celebrated Dutch artist Michael Raedecker's work spanning his 30-year career Michael Raedecker, the acclaimed Dutch artist, records the memories held within spaces and objects in his enigmatic and dream-like paintings. Suburban homes, tree houses, and empty rooms and vacant chairs, all float in haunting isolation. Muted hues are penetrated with thread and needle where the artist hand-sews forms into textural materiality. Since the beginning of his career as a painter, Raedecker has incorporated embroidery into his works as a visual counterpoint to his washed-out paint application. This survey of his work, designed by the acclaimed Dutch graphic designer, Irma Boom, is the most comprehensive published to date, featuring essays by a unique and diverse group of critics, curators, artists, and academics.
To Write as if Already Dead circles around Kate Zambreno's failed attempts to write a study of Herve Guibert's To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life. Zambreno, who has been pushing the boundaries of literary form for a decade, investigates Guibert's methods by adopting them, offering a keen sense of the energy and confessional force of his work.
Receiving recognition as a highly anticipated release, this book has garnered attention from notable publications like Entertainment Weekly and Refinery29. It promises to deliver a compelling narrative that captivates readers, offering unique themes and engaging characters that resonate with contemporary issues. The buzz surrounding its release suggests a significant impact within the literary community, making it a must-read for those seeking fresh and thought-provoking content.
On the ongoing project of writing about grief; Zambreno's addendum to Book of Mutter.
In the first half of Kate Zambreno's astoundingly original collection, the narrator regales us with incisive and witty swatches from a life lived inside a brilliant mind, meditating on aging and vanity, fame and failure, writing and writers, along with portraits of everyone from Susan Sontag to Amal Clooney, Maurice Blanchot to Louise Brooks. The series of essays that follow, on figures central to Zambreno's thinking, including Kathy Acker, David Wojnarowicz, and Barbara Loden, are manifestoes about art, that ingeniously intersect and chime with the stories that came before them
The haunting debut novel that put Kate Zambreno on the map, O Fallen Angel, is a provocative, voice-driven story of a family in crisis—and, more broadly, the crisis of the American family—now repackaged and with a new introduction by Lidia Yuknavitch. Inspired by Francis Bacon's Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, Kate Zambreno's brilliant novel is a triptych of modern-day America set in a banal Midwestern landscape, told from three distinct, unforgettable points of view. There is "Mommy," a portrait of housewife psychosis, fenced in by her own small mind. There is "Maggie," Mommy's unfortunate daughter whom she infects with fairytales. Then there is the mysterious martyr-figure Malachi, a Cassandra in army fatigues, the Septimus Smith to Mommy's Mrs. Dalloway, who stands at the foot of the highway holding signs of fervent prophecy, gaping at the bottomless abyss of the human condition, while SUVs scream past. Deeply poignant, sometimes hilarious, and other times horrifying, O Fallen Angel is satire at its best.