Joanna Scott
Joanna Scott was born on June 22, 1960, in the United States, and went on to pursue an education that took her from Darien High School to Brown University. An American citizen writing in English, she built her career as a novelist working within that literary tradition.
Scott has produced fiction in the English language throughout her career as a novelist. That work brought her recognition in the form of two notable fellowships: a Guggenheim Fellowship and a MacArthur Fellowship, both awarded during the course of her writing life. These fellowships stand among the most concrete markers of the recognition her fiction has received.
The Library of Congress catalogs her under the authorized label "Scott, Joanna, 1960-," placing her within the formal record of American literary culture. Scott continues her career as a novelist and a citizen of the United States, with the Guggenheim and MacArthur fellowships among the clearest points of reference in the public record of her work.
Quotes by Joanna Scott
Complex literary works demand an effort from the reader that is becoming harder to justify, given the sink-or-swim pressures to make profitable products for a global marketplace.
Vladimir Nabokov on 'Bleak House' or Henry James on 'The House of the Seven Gables' prove that reading can be an exciting subject in itself, full of passionate encounters, contradictory judgments, striking discoveries, and unexpected reversals.
When we read about reading, we get to share an experience that is usually kept private. Incisive descriptions of reading help us to understand what is going on when our eyes move across words on the page.
I don't think Donald Barthelme would have minded being called a confusing writer. Confusion was a favorite subject for him in his essays and reviews, and it's enacted in his fiction in a mishmash of dizzying incongruities.
In the ongoing celebration that is literature, we are asked to imagine ourselves as other selves, for better or worse.
In the early 1980s, I spent a year working as an assistant at the Elaine Markson Literary Agency.
I'm really such a bumbler! Writing fiction is like arranging furniture in a dark room. I can't see what I'm doing. I grope for the right words. I bump against the wrong words and stumble and stub my toe and curse and keep trying to guess what belongs in the space.
The best liars lie with their eyes rather than with their words. This might put writers at a disadvantage.
The novelist in me is probably hiding behind all the stories I write, looking for ways to connect them and continue the conversation with readers. Maybe I'm writing one long narrative, and each book, however different from the last, is just a chapter.