Ottessa Moshfegh

Ottessa Moshfegh was born and 1981 in Boston, Massachusetts, where her parents, both musicians, taught at the New England Conservatory of Music. She received a bachelor’s degree in English from Barnard College in 2002. She moved abroad after college, teaching English and working at a punk bar in China. She returned to the United States in her mid-20s and lived in New York, where she worked for a publishing house. She went on to earn an MFA from Brown University in 2011. Her debut, the novella McGlue, was published in 2014 and was the first recipient of the Fence Modern Prize in Prose. Her subsequent novel, Eileen, was shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize. My Year of Rest and Relaxation was published in 2018 and received overwhelmingly positive attention from critics. Moshfegh lives with her husband, the writer Luke B. Goebel, who collaborated with her on the screenplay for the 2022 drama film Causeway, starring Jennifer Lawrence.