Lauren Elkin is a Franco-American writer and translator, most recently the author of Art Monsters: Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art  (Chatto & Windus/FSG). Her debut novel in English, Scaffolding, will be out in the UK on 13 June 2024 (Chatto & Windus) and in the US on 17 September 2024 (FSG).

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Previous books include No. 91/92: Notes on a Parisian Commute (Semiotext(e)/Les Fugitives, 2021) and Flâneuse: Women Walk the City, which was a finalist for the 2018 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, a  New York Times Editor’s Choice and a Notable Books of 2017, a Radio 4 Book of the Week, and a best book of 2016 by the Guardian, the Financial Times, the New Statesman, and the Observer. It has appeared in nine languages.

 

Her writings on books, art, and culture have appeared in a variety of publications including the London Review of Books, the New York Times, Granta, Harper’s, Le Monde, the Times Literary Supplement, Les Inrockuptibles, and Frieze, and her essay "This is the Beginning of Writing," published in the Sewanee Review, was awarded notable distinction in the Best American Essays of 2019, edited by Rebecca Solnit.

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Lauren is a translator working from French to English, most notably Simone de Beauvoir's previously-unpublished novel The Inseparables, as well as work by Colombe Schneck, Michelle Perrot, Constance Debré, Lola Lafon, and more Simone de Beauvoir. In 2017 she was awarded the French-American Foundation's translation prize for her translation of Claude Arnaud's biography of Jean Cocteau, co-translated with Charlotte Mandell. It was also longlisted for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography in 2017.

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She holds a PhD in English from the City University of New York/Université de Paris, and an M.Phil in French from the Sorbonne, and has taught literature and creative writing at New York University, the American University of Paris, the University of Liverpool, and the Université de Paris-Denis Diderot.

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For all projects, commissions, and enquiries, please contact Sarah Chalfant at the Wylie Agency: schalfant@wylieagency.co.uk 

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