This week’s Distinguished Writer: Rebecca Brown

Who is Rebecca Brown?

“If Samuel Beckett were a woman in late- 20th century America,” one critic has noted, “he might have written stories like Brown’s.”

Rebecca Brown’s thirteenth book is a collection of eclectic essays in cultural criticism entitled American Romances. Her other works of fiction and nonfiction include The Terrible Girls, The Gifts of the Body, Annie Oakley’s Girl, The Last Time I Saw You, The End of Youth, and Excerpts from a Family Medical Dictionary. Her writing has appeared in anthologies including Queer 13: Lesbian and Gay Writers Recall Seventh Grade (edited by Wesleyan Visiting Writer Clifford Chase) and has been translated into Japanese, German, Italian, Norwegian, and Dutch. A frequent collaborator, she has written numerous texts for dance. Woman in Ill Fitting Wig is a book-length collaboration with painter Nancy Kiefer. She has recently co-edited Looking Together, anthology of writers’ responses to work at the Frye Art Museum, which the University of Washington Press will publish in spring 2009.

What: Rebecca Brown – novelist, teacher, activist