The Mystery of Perception: A Conversation with Lynne Tillman

Taylor Lewandowski has written for Interview Magazine, Bookforum, Los Angeles Review of Books, Forever Magazine, and The Creative Independent, among other publications. He owns Dream Palace Books & Coffee and lives in Indianapolis, IN.

Lynne Tillman is a novelist, short story writer, and cultural critic. Her novels are Haunted Houses; Motion Sickness; Cast in Doubt; No Lease on Life, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction; American Genius, A Comedy, and Men and Apparitions, nominated for a Republic of Consciousness Prize (UK, 2021). Her nonfiction books include The Velvet Years: Warhol's Factory 1965-67, with photographs by Stephen Shore; What Would Lynne Tillman Do?, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, and The Broad Picture. Her essays and stories are published in various journals including Frieze, Bomb, The Whitney Review, Bookforum, Aperture, Artforum, N+1, and in artist's monographs and gallery books such as those of Dana Schutz, Steve Locke, Stanley Whitney, Amy Sillman, and Raymond Pettibon, and in museum catalogues inculding The Whitney Museum of American Art; The ICP Boston, Hammer Museum, and MOCA. Tillman has received a Guggenheim Fellowship; a Creative Capital/Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, and was awarded the Katherine Anne Porter Prize by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her most recent work is Mothercare, an autobiographical book-length essay. In 2025, Soft Skull Press will publish her collected stories, Thrilled to Death. In 2026, Zwirner Press will publish a collection of her essays on art and culture. She lives in Manhattan with bass player David Hofstra.

Andrew Durbin is the author of MacArthur Park (2017) and Skyland (2020). His book about Peter Hujar and Paul Thek, The Wonderful World that Almost Was, is forthcoming from FSG in the winter of 2026. He is the editor-in-chief of frieze and lives in London.

Claire Donato is the author of three full-length books, most recently Kind Mirrors, Ugly Ghosts (Archway Editions, 2023). Her work has been included in numerous anthologies, and recent writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Parapraxis, Forever, The Chicago Review, Fence, and The Brooklyn Rail. In addition to writing, Claire makes music, illustrates, and has a 35mm photography practice. She lives in Brooklyn with her cat Woebegone.

Emily LaBarge is a writer based in London. Her work has appeared in Artforum, Bookforum, the London Review of Books, the New York Times, and the Paris Review, among other publications. Dog Days will be published in the UK by Peninsula Press in 2025.