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About the Author
Laura Kipnis is the author of How to Become a Scandal, Against Love, and The Female Thing. A professor in the Department of Radio/TV/Film at Northwestern University, she has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the NEA. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Harper’s, Slate, and Bookforum, among others. She lives in New York and Chicago.
A Conversation With the Author
Where are you from? Chicago
Who are your favorite writers? Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Sigmund Freud, Adam Phillips, Janet Malcolm
Which book/books have had the biggest influence on your writing? Richard Ford, Independence Day; Philip Roth, Portnoy's Complaint; Saul Bellow, Adventures of Augie March. I like writers with strong voices.
What are your hobbies and outside interests? Fretting, analyzing, intellectualizing.
What is the single best piece of advice anyone ever gave you? "Stop overthinking it" (unfortunately I couldn't take the advice).
What is your favorite quote? "Is there a creative figure who has not had a desperately confused sex life?"-Gilbert Sorrentino. "Fortune favors the bold."-Virgil
What is the question most commonly asked by your readers? What is the answer? I've been startled that people have tended to either read my last two books as advice books (on love and romance, or male-female relations), OR to complain that I didn't offer specific-enough advice, which is why I've written a "How To" book this time around.
What inspired you to write your first book? Annoyance at feminist bossiness (This was Bound and Gagged, actually my second book.) I dislike moralism and moralizers, hence my sympathy for scandalizers perhaps.
Where do you write? In my bedroom, though unfortunately it's not cork-lined (as Proust's was, I believe).
