Atticus Lish
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Atticus Lish (born 1972) is an American novelist. His debut, ''Preparation for the Next Life'', caught its independent publisher, Tyrant, "off guard" by becoming a surprise success, winning a number of awards including the
PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction is awarded annually by the PEN/Faulkner Foundation to the authors of the year's best works of fiction by living American citizens. The winner receives US$15,000 and each of four runners-up receives US$5000. Fi ...
. Lish lives in Sunset Park, Brooklyn with his wife. He is the son of influential literary editor
Gordon Lish Gordon Lish (born February 11, 1934 in Hewlett, New York) is an American writer. As a literary editor, he championed many American authors, particularly Raymond Carver, Barry Hannah, Amy Hempel, Rick Bass, and Richard Ford. He is the father of t ...
.


''Preparation for the Next Life''

''Preparation for the Next Life'' is set mostly in
Flushing, Queens Flushing is a neighborhood in the north-central portion of the New York City borough of Queens. The neighborhood is the fourth-largest central business district in New York City. Downtown Flushing is a major commercial and retail area, and the ...
, and follows two new arrivals to the city. Zou Lei is an illegal immigrant from the Chinese province of Xinjiang, daughter of a Uighur mother and a
Han Han may refer to: Ethnic groups * Han Chinese, or Han People (): the name for the largest ethnic group in China, which also constitutes the world's largest ethnic group. ** Han Taiwanese (): the name for the ethnic group of the Taiwanese p ...
father. Brad Skinner is a Pennsylvania-born veteran of the Iraq war. While struggling to survive in New York's underground economy, Zou Lei meets Skinner, who is suffering from untreated combat trauma. Their attempts to build a life together, overcoming the violence, predation, and alienation surrounding them, amount to what ''Times'' critic Dwight Garner has called "perhaps the finest and most unsentimental love story of the new decade". The judges of the 2015 PEN/Faulkner Award praised the book for its blend of documentary detail and "incantation," stating that it "scours and illuminates the vast, traumatized America that lives, works and loves outside the castle gates."


Personal and family life

Lish was born in Manhattan. Like his father, the younger Lish attended
Phillips Academy ("Not for Self") la, Finis Origine Pendet ("The End Depends Upon the Beginning") Youth From Every Quarter Knowledge and Goodness , address = 180 Main Street , city = Andover , state = Ma ...
, where he studied Mandarin. Lish describes his childhood as one of "huge privilege". His father's colleague, the novelist
Don DeLillo Donald Richard DeLillo (born November 20, 1936) is an American novelist, short story writer, playwright, screenwriter and essayist. His works have covered subjects as diverse as television, nuclear war, sports, the complexities of language, per ...
, used a verbatim prose passage by the nine-year-old Atticus in his novel '' The Names'', with an acknowledgement: "A printed shout from the housetops goes as well to Atticus Lish, in fond appreciation". Lish dropped out of
Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
after two years. He then worked several unglamorous jobs, including
Papaya King Papaya King is a fast food take-out restaurant in New York City. It currently has a single location in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, its original location; it has made several attempts to expand to other locations, but these expansions have ...
and a foam factory in
Gardena, California Gardena is a city located in the South Bay (Los Angeles County), South Bay region of Los Angeles County, California, Los Angeles County, California, United States. The population was 58,829 at the 2010 census, up from 57,746 at the 2000 census. ...
. Lish joined the
US Marine Corps The United States Marine Corps (USMC), also referred to as the United States Marines, is the maritime land force service branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for conducting expeditionary and amphibious operations through combi ...
, but was honorably discharged one and a half years into a four-year enlistment. Lish married his wife, Beth, a Korean-born schoolteacher, in 1995. In his mid-30s, Lish returned to Harvard and graduated with a thesis on Ascoli's theorem. During his second matriculation, Lish took a fiction course that inspired him to focus on writing. In 2005, Lish and his wife spent a year teaching English in China's
Hubei Province Hubei (; ; alternately Hupeh) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, and is part of the Central China region. The name of the province means "north of the lake", referring to its position north of Dongting Lake. The prov ...
; a visit to the remote northwest of the country became the inspiration for his Uighur protagonist. Lish moved to Brooklyn in 2006. He began work on ''Preparation for the Life to Come'' in 2008, and spent five years writing the book in longhand. Of his relationship with his influential father, Lish has said: "When I was writing this book, I was completely isolated from family, from any of the significance my name might have had...It was me and my wife, living together, isolated from almost everybody." According to the ''Times'', the death in 1994 of Gordon's wife, the mother of Atticus, led to a twelve-year estrangement between the two men. Lish maintains that the two have since reconciled, but that he would "absolutely not" have considered asking his well-respected father for help, either in writing or in marketing his work. However, after his manuscript was accepted by Tyrant's founder Giancarlo DiTrapano, Gordon Lish helped persuade his own literary agent, Amanda "Binky" Urban, to take his son on as a client. Urban has helped to sell British and French rights to ''Preparation for the Next Life'', and is negotiating the sale of film rights. A fluent Mandarin speaker, Lish was working as a technical translator at the time of his novel's publication. In November 2014, he told the ''Times'' he'd begun work on another novel. ''The Wall Street Journal'' reports the novel is set in Boston. Lish claims not to read much recent fiction. In an interview with ''The New York Times'', he cites movies, television, and music as sources of inspiration. "In training to write, I was drawn to
Hemingway Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century fic ...
,
Dos Passos John Roderigo Dos Passos (; January 14, 1896 – September 28, 1970) was an American novelist, most notable for his ''U.S.A.'' trilogy. Born in Chicago, Dos Passos graduated from Harvard College in 1916. He traveled widely as a young man, visit ...
,
Flaubert Gustave Flaubert ( , , ; 12 December 1821 – 8 May 1880) was a French novelist. Highly influential, he has been considered the leading exponent of literary realism in his country. According to the literary theorist Kornelije Kvas, "in Flauber ...
,
Tolstoy Count Lev Nikolayevich TolstoyTolstoy pronounced his first name as , which corresponds to the romanization ''Lyov''. () (; russian: link=no, Лев Николаевич Толстой,In Tolstoy's day, his name was written as in pre-refor ...
and
the Bible The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a ...
. Maybe there's a throwback thing that people are getting into. It's like hemlines probably. They were short for a while, and now people are ready for them to be long again."


Mixed martial arts career

Lish spent six years training to become a professional mixed-martial-arts fighter, and continues to practice grappling, including
Brazilian jiujitsu Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ; pt, jiu-jitsu brasileiro ) is a self-defence martial art and combat sport based on grappling, ground fighting (ne-waza) and submission holds. BJJ focuses on the skill of taking an opponent to the ground, control ...
, in New York City gyms. According to a 'Talk of the Town' piece in ''The New Yorker'', Lish owns a 1-1-0 record in professional M.M.A. bouts.


List of works

*''Life is With People'' (New York:
Tyrant Books Tyrant Books is an independent book publisher based in Rome, Italy and New York, New York. It was created in 2009 by Giancarlo DiTrapano as an offshoot of ''New York Tyrant Magazine'', which was also founded by DiTrapano, in 2006. History Tyr ...
) A difficult-to-classify work Lish describes as "a bildungsroman" and "a cautionary tale whose point is clear" (Tyrant website), with illustrations by the author. *'' Preparation for the Next Life'' (New York:
Tyrant Books Tyrant Books is an independent book publisher based in Rome, Italy and New York, New York. It was created in 2009 by Giancarlo DiTrapano as an offshoot of ''New York Tyrant Magazine'', which was also founded by DiTrapano, in 2006. History Tyr ...
, 2014) *''The War for Gloria'' (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. () is an American publishing house that was founded by Alfred A. Knopf Sr. and Blanche Knopf in 1915. Blanche and Alfred traveled abroad regularly and were known for publishing European, Asian, and Latin American writers in ...
, 2021)


Awards and honors

*2015 Plimpton Prize for Fiction, ''Preparation for the Next Life'' *2015
PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction is awarded annually by the PEN/Faulkner Foundation to the authors of the year's best works of fiction by living American citizens. The winner receives US$15,000 and each of four runners-up receives US$5000. Fi ...
, ''Preparation for the Next Life'' *2015 Carla Furstenberg Cohen Literary Prize (given to authors of first or second books) *2015 New York City Book Award (Presented by the Society Library) *2016
Grand Prix de Littérature Américaine Grand Prix de Littérature Américaine (''American Literature Grand Prize'') is a French literary award given each year to an American novel translated into French and published in that year starting January 1. The first award was in 2015. The award ...
, ''Preparation for the Next Life''


References


External links


"Jimmy", short story by Lish
(excerpt from ''Preparation for the Next Life''),
Paris Review ''The Paris Review'' is a quarterly English-language literary magazine established in Paris in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton. In its first five years, ''The Paris Review'' published works by Jack Kerouac, Philip ...
no. 210, Fall 2014
Tyrant Books

Long interview with Lish in ''The Brooklyn Rail
''">The Brooklyn Rail">Long interview with Lish in ''The Brooklyn Rail
'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Lish, Atticus Living people American fiction writers 21st-century American novelists Writers from Brooklyn Phillips Academy alumni PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction winners Harvard University alumni Novelists from New York (state) 1972 births People from Sunset Park, Brooklyn