What Would Lynne Tillman Do?

Here is an American mind contemplating contemporary society & culture with wit, imagination, & a brave intelligence. Tillman upends expectations, shifts tone, introduces characters, breaches limits of genre & category, reconfiguring the world with the turn of a sentence. Like other unique thinkers, Tillman sees the world differently—she is not a malcontent, but she is discontented. Her responses to art & literature, to social & political questions change the reader's mind, startling it with new angles. Which is why so many of us who know her work often wonder: what would Lynne Tillman do? 

A long-time resident of New York, Tillman's sharp humor is like her city's, tough & hilarious. There are distinct streams of concern coursing through the seeming eclecticism of topics—Hillary Clinton, Jane Bowles, O.J. Simpson, art & artists, Harry Mathews, the state of fiction, film, the state of her mind, the State of the Nation. There is a great variety, but what remains consistent is how differently she writes about them, how well she understands, how passionate & bold her writing is.

What does Lynne Tillman do? Everything. Anything. You name it. She has a conversation with you, & you're a better, smarter person for it.

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Lynne Tillman is a novelist, short story writer, & cultural critic. Her novels are Haunted Houses; Motion Sickness; Cast in Doubt; No Lease on Life, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; American Genius, A Comedy, & Men & Apparitions. Her nonfiction books include The Velvet Years: Warhol’s Factory 1965–1967, with photographs by Stephen Shore; Bookstore: The Life & Times of Jeannette Watson & Books & Co.; & What Would Lynne Tillman Do?, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship & The Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. Tillman is Professor/Writer-in-Residence in the Department