Lindsay Stern '13
Name: Lindsay Stern
Place of Birth: Boston, MA
Current Home: New Haven, CT
Education: B.A. Amherst College (summa cum laude, phi beta kappa, English and Philosophy, 2013); MFA in fiction, Iowa Writers’ Workshop (2017); PhD in Comparative Literature, Yale University (expected May 2022)
Why I chose Amherst: I wanted an education anchored in the seminar room, with all the risk-taking and intellectual improvisation it entails, rather than the lecture hall.
Most memorable class: Not to sound Pollyannish, but Amherst professors are so devoted and intellectually engaged, as a rule, that for me the pertinent question is which courses were non-memorable. Of the many impactful classes I took, Daniel Hall’s special topics courses on writing poetry—held in his magnificent personal library—were a special joy. The class that still reverberates through most of what I write is Professor Sitze’s course “Plato and the Poets,” which I took in the spring of my sophomore year at Amherst. In some ways, The Study of Animal Languages is an attempt to work through the question of why Plato exiled the poets from his utopia. If you know, please call me.
Research Interests?
I’m currently focused on science studies and Wittgenstein’s philosophy of psychology. In preparation for my dissertation project, I’m researching the transformation of animals into sites of knowledge production about human minds.
Awards and Prizes
Watson Fellowship, Lois Kahn Wallace Writers’ Award (Brearley School), Amy Award (Poets & Writers’ Magazine), Academy of American Poets Prize, Maytag Fellowship (Iowa Writers’ Workshop), Teaching-Writing Fellowship (Iowa Writers’ Workshop), Taylor-Chehak Prize (Iowa Writers’ Workshop), James Charlton Knox Prize (Amherst), Laura Ayres Snyder Prize (Amherst), Ralph Waldo Rice Prize (Amherst), FLAS Fellowship, DAAD Fellowship, Max Kade Award (Yale), Franke Fellowship (Yale).
Favorite Book
I don’t have one, any more than I have a favorite person! The book that fed The Study of Animal Languages most intimately was J. M. Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello.
Tips for aspiring writers? Cultivate rejections. I have enough to wallpaper a decent-sized bathroom. If you don’t, you’re not shooting high enough.
Tell us a bit about your path to becoming an author
Writing has never been a choice for me. It’s how I live, how I deal with the catastrophe of being alive. Becoming an author transforms that way of life into an act of communication that might—with luck—help someone else live. That’s a miracle I’ll never get over.
Lindsay Stern is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the recipient of a Watson Fellowship and an Amy Award from Poets & Writers magazine. She is currently pursuing a PhD in comparative literature at Yale University. The Study of Animal Languages is her first novel.
Learn more about The Study of Animal Languages on Lindsay's website. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Photo Credit: Lee Stern