Q. The pandemic makes your book especially timely, as it's partlya meditation on another illness, AIDS. Is that just a coincidence?

A. Yes, it is a coincidence, but I believe entirely in coincidences, especially as they happen in the process of writing. So the work becomes a meditation on pandemics, morality, the body, all stuff that was already in the Guibert novel and felt so eerily magnified in the process of living through and writing the book.

Q. What have you read lately that you would recommend, and what are you planning to read next?

A. I recently wrote the introduction to the Portuguese writer Maria Judite de Carvalho's 1966 novel,Empty Wardrobes, translated by the great Margaret Jull Costa and published by Two Lines Press. I've also been loving the novels of the French writer, Marie NDiaye, translated by Jordan Stump, also published by Two Lines Press.

I've been reading the diaries of the artist, Eva Hesse, for a novel that I'm working on that, in part, thinks through her sculptural practice. Next up is School of the Arts Professor Susan Bernofsky's biography of Robert Walser, for an event that I'm doing with her via the Center for the Art of Translation, in June. I also am looking forward to reading Thalia Field's new collection,Personhood.

Q. What are your summer plans?

A. I have an eight-month-old baby and a four-year-old, so my summer will revolve around them, and going to Prospect Park with them hopefully almost every day. I also am intending to eke out some of the collection I'm working on,The Missing Person.

Q. You're hosting a dinner party. Which three scholars or academics, dead or alive, would you invite, and why?

A. I would definitely invite friends who are thinkers and writers I love that I long to seeBhanu Kapil, Sofia Samatar, Danielle Dutton, T. Fleischmann are four that come to mind, but there are many more! And I probably wouldn't host a dinner partyI would try to attend a dinner party someone else hosted if I had childcare!

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A Meditation On Illness | Columbia News - Columbia University