Vladimir Nabokov once wrote that art is “beauty plus pity.” It’s a formula author Mary Gaitskill took to heart, after quoting his words in a tribute essay years ago. They’ve both been accused, after ...

Just before I left my apartment to meet Mary Gaitskill, I slipped off my engagement ring. It just seemed … uncool. Too conventional, maybe, and the Mary Gaitskill I had stuck in my head seemed like ...

Mary Gaitskill, an author known for her frank depictions of sex, violence, desire and dominance is working on a response to the #MeToo movement — in fiction. “It’s related to #MeToo,” she said from ...

Mary Gaitskill first became known in the 1980s for her defiantly honest and perverse short stories, where, in charged sentences, she depicted the shifting power balances of damaging relationships and ...

Writer Mary Gaitskill delves into the innermost thoughts of her characters, however troubling they may be. Ideas of sex and psychosis often unfold on the page, painting portraits of damaged souls. But ...

At a panel discussion for the New Yorker Festival featuring Emma Cline, Mary Gaitskill, and moderator Molly Fisher, Cline said John Cheever’s much-anthologized short story “The Swimmer,” which first ...

Everyone weathered the pandemic in their own way. Out of the isolation, literary icon Mary Gaitskill forged a reimagining of her own work by stitching together fragments of previously published pieces ...

Imagine the cast of Mary Gaitskill’s last novel, “Veronica,” denizens of the downtown art galleries and clubs, if they got sober, got jobs and moved to upstate New York to raise families. This is the ...

In the Strand’s rare-book room, located on the bookstore’s third floor, there is a $45,000 copy of Ulysses, complete with illustrations by Matisse, and signed by both the artist and the author. It’s ...

In the twilight of a year rich with books about race in America, Mary Gaitskill has just published a novel about the knee-smashing effects of minority poverty and the corrosive tonic of liberal guilt.