Kathryn Davis (born November 13, 1946) is an American novelist. She is a recipient of a Lannan Literary Award.
Life Davis has taught at Skidmore College, and is now senior fiction writer in the Writing Program in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.
Davis lives in Montpelier, Vermont. Her husband, the novelist and essayist Eric Zencey, died in 2019. She has one daughter, Daphne, who also lives in Montpelier.
Awards She is a recipient of the Janet Heidiger Kafka Prize, the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1999, a 2000 Guggenheim Fellowship,Kathryn Davis, Houghton Mifflin, accessed December 16, 2006 and a Lannan Literary Award for Fiction in 2006.
Reception Kathryn Davis' work has been met with mostly positive reviews by critics. The Thin Place was lauded by Christian Science Monitor as "impressively creative." The New York Times Book Review called it "divinely inspired . . . if at times a little aimless." San Francisco Chronicle said "Davis' particular talent is her ability to juggle Big Ideas and the minutiae of daily life in an engaging, unpretentious way.""Resurrection in a town long on violence", Irena Reyn, San Francisco Chronicle, January 29, 2006 The Village Voice said Davis' writing is "ripe with evocative prose that always manages to undercut itself neatly." The Washington Post reviewed The Thin Place and called it "sly and playful, but also serious about exposing the spiritual lining of everyday phenomena.""Close Encounters of an Everyday Kind" Julia Lifshin, The Washington Post Book World, March 5, 2006
Davis' first memoir, Aurelia, Aurélia, was met with positive reviews. Los Angeles Times said Davis' ability to "sidestep reality has allowed her to successfully transcend the conventional let-me-tell-you style of memoir." The New York Times said her memoir "mimics the atemporal quality of the episodes that give meaning to life." The Chicago Review of Books said her memoir teaches an important lesson: "it is only through our remarkable apparatus of association that we will find meaning in life."
Novels
The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf. Knopf. 1993; Little, Brown. 2003. Hell. Ecco Press. 1998; Little, Brown. 2003.
The Thin Place. Little, Brown and Company. 2006. ; Little, Brown. 2007.
Silk Road. Graywolf Press. 2019. Aurelia, Aurélia. Graywolf Press. 2022.
Notes