Lockwood on A.S. Byatt's Possession
Patricia Lockwood chooses A.S. Byatt’s Possession, a much-loved book that gave Lockwood ‘permission’ to pursue her literary passion: ‘it was not a waste of time, not a waste of life, to read’.
Patricia Lockwood
Patricia Lockwood is an American poet, novelist and essayist who was born in a trailer in Indiana and raised 'in all the worst cities of the Midwest'.
She is the only debut novelist on the 2021 Booker Prize shortlist with No One Is Talking About This, which was also shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Lockwood has previously written two poetry collections, Balloon Pop Outlaw Black and Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals, and the memoir Priestdaddy, chosen by 15 publications as their book of the year. She is a contributing editor for the London Review of Books and is currently working on a collection of short fiction and a new novel.
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The internet – in the form of social media, at least – is much more like fiction than it is anything else
All nominated books
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2021. Patricia Lockwood’s sincere and delightfully profane love letter to the infinite scroll, and a meditation on love, language and human connection.
