Lynn Crawford
Contact Lynn — contact@lynncrawford.net
“SHANKUS & KITTO: A SAGA is a complex chronicling of two interwoven families, who live—sometimes thriving, sometimes surviving—in the blight and fright of the American cityscape. Each chapter finds a member of one of these alternately eccentric and endearing families narrating overlapping events, comically proving that “eyewitness” testimony can sometimes be another kind of blindness. Stories within stories abound, references\ to Walt Whitman, Gertrude Stein, Anna Karenina, Anne Boylen, and the mythological Pandora further complicating and illuminating things. Storytelling, its windfalls and pitfalls, is a recurring theme, Meg Kitto at\ one point asking, “What is the difference between believing stories and being delusional?” Nonjudgmentally attentive to her characters’ fables and foibles, with a style reminiscent of Lydia Davis and Deborah Eisenberg, Crawford masterfully reveals how and where we go awry, the fumbling ways we interpret each other’s words and deeds, slights and sleights.”
Fiction writer and art critic Lynn Crawford is a founding board member of Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD), a 2010 Kresge Literary Arts Fellow and a 2016 Rauschenberg Writing Fellow. Her books include Solow, Blow, Fortification Resort, a series of art-related sestinas, Simply Separate People and Simply Separate People, Two. Her latest novel (2016) is Shankus & Kitto : A Saga. Her work appears in various anthologies (Oulipo Compendium, Fetish, Brooklyn Rail, Fence) and journals (Art in America, Infinite Mile, Detroit Research, Hyperallergic, Tema Celeste, McSweeney’s, Lilies and Cannonballs, Parkett, Bookforum, Metro Times). Most recently she contributed a story, “TNW and Me” to The-N-Word, a monograph on African-American painter Peter Williams edited Ryan Standfest, and an essay to Detroit, The Dream is now, a collection of photographs of art, food and design by Michael Arnaud (Abrams Books). Lynn earned a MSW from New York University and has worked in various psychiatric, community, hospital, museum and school settings. She lives with her family north of Detroit.
“Lynn Crawford’s novel Shankus & Kitto demands attention from its readers, and they are richly rewarded for their efforts. Crawford delves into the lives of four characters related by either blood or marriage. Her narrative deftly establishes connective threads between them. Each chapter is told in first person by one of the central characters, allowing Crawford to present multiple subjective points of view. As the novel progresses, the overarching story coalesces, but Crawford does not present events chronologically. The story moves back and forth through time, providing perspectives from both the Shankus and Kitto families. Past, future, and present are fluid entities, and set the stage for great and small narrative revelations.” — Colorado Review
Links to selected 2016-7 writings:
Shankus & Kitto: A Saga
Art in America
http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-features/magazine/up-close-the-once-and-future-detroit/
http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-features/news/up-close-2016-detroit/
The-N-Word
RP-29: THE N-WORD: PAINTINGS BY PETER WILLIAMS
Detroit, The Dream is Now
http://www.abramsbooks.com/product/detroit-the-dream-is-now_9781419723926/
Detroit Research https://www.detroitresearch.org
Links to recent articles about Lynn Crawford:
Earlier books available on Amazon