“Writing is…. being able to take something whole and fiercely alive that exists inside you in some unknowable combination of thought, feeling, physicality, and spirit, and to then store it like a genie in tense, tiny black symbols on a calm white page. If the wrong reader comes across the words, they will remain just words. But for the right readers, your vision blooms off the page and is absorbed into their minds like smoke, where it will re-form, whole and alive, fully adapted to its new environment.”
~ Mary Gaitskill

Mary Gaitskill is an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, Esquire, The Best American Short Stories, and The O. Henry Prize Stories.

Born: November 11, 1954 (age 61), Lexington, KY
Awards: Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts, US & Canada, New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year