American · b. 1985
Catherine Lacey writes fiction that refuses easy classification. Born in Mississippi in 1985, she's lived in New York and now lives in Chicago. Her debut, Nobody Is Ever Missing (2014), followed a woman who walks away from her life; The Answers (2017) imagined a girlfriend experiment; Pew (2020) centered on a figure of unknown gender and origin. Biography of X (2023) is her most ambitious work—an alternate history of America where the Southern states seceded and an artist named X became the twentieth century's most elusive genius. Lacey writes with formal restlessness, each book finding a new shape for examining identity, knowledge, and the stories we tell about ourselves.