October 1, 2024
We are excited to have welcomed Deborah Levy for a celebration of her collected writing, The Position of Spoons: And Other Intimacies. She was joined in conversation by Katie Kitamura, author of Intimacies and A Separation, for a stirring discussion about crafting characters’ interior lives, individual and collective consciousness, and depicting place. Watch two of contemporary fiction’s most exciting and beloved thinkers and writers in this masterclass on the art of noticing!
At the micro level, The Position of Spoons is a feast of observations about everything from the particular beauty of lemons on a table, to the allure of Colette, and the streets of Paris. At the macro level, Levy traces and measures her life against the backdrop of different literary imaginations, presenting a beautiful composition of the self. Levy’s book is full of wisdom and astonishment, bringing us into intimate conversation with one of literature’s most intellectually curious writers.
Featured Book
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The Position of Spoons
By Deborah Levy
Published by Penguin Canada
In The Position of Spoons, Deborah Levy invites the reader into the interiors of her world, sharing her most intimate thoughts and experiences, as she traces and measures her life against the backdrop of the literary and artistic muses that have shaped her.
From Marguerite Duras to Colette and Ballard, and from Lee Miller to Francesca Woodman and Paula Rego, we can relish here the richness of their work and, in turn the richness of the author’s own.
Each page draws upon Levy’s life in exalting ways, encapsulating the wonderful precision and astonishing depth of her writing, as she seamlessly shifts between and meditates on questions of mortality, language, suburbia, gender, consumerism and the poetics of every day living. From the child born in South Africa, to her teenage years in Britain, to her travels across the world as a young woman, each page is a beautiful, tender composition of the questioning self: a portrait of Deborah Levy’s writing life and intellectual vitality in all of its dimensions.
In Conversation
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Deborah Levy
Deborah Levy
Deborah Levy writes fiction, plays, and poetry. Her work has been staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company, broadcast on the BBC, and widely translated. She is the author of several highly praised novels, including The Man Who Saw Everything (longlisted for the Booker Prize), Hot Milk and Swimming Home (both Man Booker Prize finalists), The Unloved, and Billy and Girl; the acclaimed story collection Black Vodka; and a three-part autobiography, Things I Don’t Want to Know, The Cost of Living, and Real Estate. She lives in London and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Photo Credit: Shelia Burnett
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Katie Kitamura
Katie Kitamura
Katie Kitamura’s most recent novel is Intimacies. Longlisted for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, it was one of the New York Times’s 10 Best Books of 2021 and one of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of 2021. In France, it won the Prix Litteraire Lucien Barriere, was a finalist for the Grand Prix de l’Heroine, and was nominated for the Prix Fragonard. Her work has been translated into over 20 languages and is being adapted for film and television. She is a recipient of the Rome Prize in Literature as well as fellowships from the Lannan, Jan Michalski and Santa Maddalena Foundations. She teaches in the creative writing program at New York University. Her new novel, Audition, will be published by Riverhead Books in 2025.
Photo Credit: Clayton Cubitt
