“Woman House” author Lauren Westerfield in conversation with Brian Blanchfield at Fact & Fiction

About the Book, “Woman House”:
The essays and assemblages in this book plumb the depths of two women’s experiences, exploring the pain and pleasure they find in their bodies, in culture, and in their own art. Violence, beauty, and love reverberate and dissipate and shape the forms and psyches of these two profoundly connected family members. At once raw and refined, narrative and lyrical, nostalgic and blunt, the stories and images presented here explore Westerfield’s life—from childhood to adulthood—passing through innocence, self-discovery and familial tethers. In unpacking her mother’s history and the complexities of their relationship, Westerfield finds herself confronted with her own story: one grounded in a yearning for agency and individuation, of a body and mind groomed to be at odds with one another, of a feminist politics examining deeply rooted patriarchal understandings of beauty, control, and power.

Lauren W. Westerfield is the author of Woman House and Depth Control. Her essays and poetry have been published in FENCE, Seneca Review, Willow Springs, Denver Quarterly, Indiana Review, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere. Westerfield is a 2022 Idaho Commission on the Arts Literary Fellow. She teaches at Washington State University, where she serves as the editor-in-chief of Blood Orange Review.

Brian Blanchfield is the author of three books of poetry and prose: Proxies: Essays Near Knowing (Nightboat Books, Picador UK), A Several World (Nightboat), and Not Even Then (University of California Press). His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Atlantic, Harper’s, The Paris Review, Oxford American, BOMB, Brick, The Yale Review, and in anthologies like Best American Essays and American Poets in the 21st Century, among many other publications. The recipient of a Whiting Award in Nonfiction and the Academy of American Poets’ James Laughlin Award, he is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Montana.

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