Ariel Levy writes for The New Yorker and her most current work is a profile of LA photographer Catherine Opie – read about one of LA’s most prominent contemporary artists here.
Ariel Levy by David Klagsbrun
Ariel will be in LA on Sunday, May 14 at the Skirball (see below).
Levy has a stunning memoir out this month called The Rules Do Not Apply, which is hard to turn away from. Here is Amazon’s description:
A gorgeous memoir about a woman overcoming dramatic loss and finding reinvention—for readers of Cheryl Strayed and Joan Didion
When thirty-eight-year-old New Yorker writer Ariel Levy left for a reporting trip to Mongolia in 2012, she was pregnant, married, financially secure, and successful on her own terms. A month later, none of that was true.
Levy picks you up and hurls you through the story of how she built an unconventional life and then watched it fall apart with astonishing speed. Like much of her generation, she was raised to resist traditional rules—about work, about love, and about womanhood.
“I wanted what we all want: everything. We want a mate who feels like family and a lover who is exotic, surprising. We want to be youthful adventurers and middle-aged mothers. We want intimacy and autonomy, safety and stimulation, reassurance and novelty, coziness and thrills. But we can’t have it all.”
In this profound and beautiful memoir, Levy chronicles the adventure and heartbreak of being “a woman who is free to do whatever she chooses.” Her own story of resilience becomes an unforgettable portrait of the shifting forces in our culture, of what has changed—and of what is eternal.
Ariel Levy—The Rules Do Not Apply In Conversation with Maggie Nelson
Come to the Skirball to hear award-winning New Yorker writer Ariel Levy discuss her new memoir with Maggie Nelson (The Argonauts). Like much of her generation, Levy was raised to resist traditional rules—about work, love, and womanhood. In this profound and beautiful memoir, she chronicles the adventure and heartbreak of being “a woman who is free to do whatever she chooses.” Her own story of resilience becomes an unforgettable portrait of the shifting forces in our culture, of what has changed—and of what is eternal.
As praised by the Atlantic, “Levy has the rare gift of seeing herself with fierce, unforgiving clarity, and deploys prose to match”
Books available for purchase. A Q&A and book signing follow the program.
