Ottessa Moshfegh
1 book analyzed
Biography
Ottessa Moshfegh (b. 1981) is an Iranian-Croatian American writer who grew up in the Boston suburbs, studied at Barnard College and Brown University's MFA program. Before My Year of Rest and Relaxation, she published Eileen (2015), a thriller about a deeply unpleasant young woman — establishing her signature: narrators who are compelling because of, not despite, their repulsiveness. Moshfegh has spoken openly about her own experiences with depression and her interest in characters who exist at the margins of social acceptability. She has described her writing process as channeling voices that fascinate and disturb her, and she has consistently refused to make her female narrators likable in the way contemporary publishing often demands.