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Lucy Sante

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(Redirected from Low Life (book)) American writer, critic, and artist

Lucy Sante
BornLuc Sante
(1954-05-25) May 25, 1954 (age 70)
Verviers, Belgium
OccupationWriter, critic, artist
EducationColumbia University
Notable awardsGrammy Award for Best Album Notes (1998)
Guggenheim Fellowship (1992)
Whiting Award (1989)

Lucy Sante (pronounced Sahnt; formerly Luc Sante; born May 25, 1954) is a Belgian-born American writer, critic, and artist. She is a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books. Her books include Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York (1991) and I Heard Her Call My Name (2024).

Early life and education

Born in Verviers, Belgium, Sante migrated to the United States in the early 1960s. She attended Regis High School in Manhattan, and Columbia University from 1972 to 1976. Sante worked in the mailroom and then as assistant to editor Barbara Epstein at The New York Review of Books. She became a regular contributor there, writing about film, art, photography, and miscellaneous cultural phenomena, as well as book reviews.

Career

Sante has written and edited books and written lyrics and liner notes.

Her books include Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York (1991), a non-fiction book documenting the life and politics of lower Manhattan from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century; Evidence (1992), the autobiographical The Factory of Facts (1998), Walker Evans (1999), Kill All Your Darlings: Pieces 1990-2005 (2007), Folk Photography (2009), The Other Paris (2015), Maybe the People Would Be the Times (2022), and Nineteen Reservoirs (2023). She co-edited O. K. You Mugs: Writers on Movie Actors with writer Melissa Holbrook Pierson, her former wife. Sante also translated and edited Félix Fénéon's Novels in Three Lines (2007) for New York Review Books.

In the early 1980s, Sante wrote lyrics for the New York City-based band The Del-Byzanteens. She served as historical consultant on Martin Scorsese's 2002 film Gangs of New York, and, with Jem Cohen, made the short film Le Bled (Buildings in a Field) (2009). Sante has exhibited her collages at Picture Theory in Manhattan and elsewhere.

After teaching in the Columbia MFA writing program, Sante moved to Ulster County, New York, and taught writing and the history of photography at Bard College for 24 years before she retired in 2023.

Personal life

Sante lived as a man until announcing that she was transitioning to being a woman in 2021. She wrote on her Instagram account: "Yes, this is me, and yes, I am transitioning–I have joined the other team. Yes, I've known since at least age 11 but probably earlier and yes, I suppressed and denied it for decades.... I started...hormone replacement therapy in early May....You can call me Lucy (but I won't freak out if you misgender me) and my pronoun, thankyouverymuch, is she." In February 2022 she wrote an essay in the magazine Vanity Fair explaining her transition at almost 70 years old. Her 2024 memoir, I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition, follows her process of coming out and was named one of the Ten Best Books of 2024 by the New York Times. Sante has been married twice, and has a son.

Publications

Books

  • Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux. 1991. ISBN 9780374194147.
  • Evidence. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux/Noonday Press. 1992. ISBN 9780374523657.
  • The Factory of Facts. New York: Pantheon. 1998. ISBN 9780679424109. Paperback edition: Vintage Books, 1999. ISBN 978-0679746508.
  • Walker Evans. London: Phaidon. 1999. ISBN 9780714840475.
  • Kill All Your Darlings: Pieces 1990-2005. Portland, OR: Yeti/Verse Chorus Press. 2007. ISBN 9781891241536.
  • Folk Photography: The American Real-Photo Postcard, 1905–1930. Portland, OR: Yeti/Verse Chorus Press. 2009. ISBN 9781891241550. New edition: The Visible Spectrum, 2022. ISBN 9781953835185.
  • The Other Paris. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux. 2015. ISBN 9780374299323.
  • Maybe the People Would Be the Times. Portland, OR: Verse Chorus Press. 2020. ISBN 9781891241574.
  • Nineteen Reservoirs: On Their Creation and the Promise of Water for New York City. New York: The Experiment. 2022. ISBN 9781615198658.
  • I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition. New York: Penguin Press. 2024. ISBN 9780593493762.

Chapbooks

  • My Life in Poetry, 1970-1981. All-Seeing Eye. 2009.
  • Twelve Sides. All-Seeing Eye. 2010.
  • The Unknown Soldier. Lodger. 2018.
  • Six Sermons for Bob Dylan. London: Tenement Press. 2024. ISBN 9781917304016.

Editor/Translator

  • Fénéon, Félix (2007). Novels in Three Lines. New York: New York Review Books. ISBN 9781590172308.

Co-editor

Exhibitions

  • Some Recent Collages, James Fuentes Gallery, 2020

Awards and honors

References

  1. Sante, Luc. "The Factory of Facts". The New York Times. Retrieved November 28, 2024.
  2. Abramovich, Alex (August 19, 2022). "The Art of Nonfiction No. 9". The Paris Review. Retrieved December 3, 2024.
  3. "New York Review of Books". August 10, 2006.
  4. O'Kelly, Lisa (March 9, 2024). "'This secret that crippled me for 50 years has been lifted': Lucy Sante on becoming a trans woman at 67". The Guardian. Retrieved March 9, 2024.
  5. "Down and Dirty : LOW LIFE: Lures and Snares of Old New York, By Luc Sante (Farrar, Straus & Giroux: $27.50; 414 pp., illustrated)". Los Angeles Times. September 29, 1991. Retrieved February 6, 2022.
  6. Rubin, Hanna (September 29, 1991). "New York Seedy". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved February 6, 2022.
  7. Schoemer, Karen (February 21, 1993). "Lowlife: It's a Life". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved February 6, 2022.
  8. "Contemporary Authors Online". Farmington Hills, Michigan: Gale. 2009.
  9. "Novels in Three Lines". New York Review Books. February 24, 2015. Retrieved December 3, 2024.
  10. Kellman, Andy (n.d.) The Del-Byzantines, Allmusic.com, retrieved April 9, 2014
  11. "Lost City Found: an interview with Luc Sante". Retrieved December 10, 2024.
  12. "WATCH: Le Bled (Buildings in a field) - Jem Cohen & Luc Sante, 2009" (video). youtube.com. December 11, 2024.
  13. "Maybe the People Would Be the Times". Picture Theory Projects. Retrieved December 12, 2024.
  14. Relations, Bard Public. "East Village Author, Bard Professor Lucy Sante Weaves Together Fiction and Memoir in New Collection of Essays". Bard College. Retrieved December 3, 2024.
  15. Sante, Lucy (September 19, 2021). "I have been shilly-shallying about this long enough". Retrieved September 22, 2021 – via Instagram.
  16. "On Becoming Lucy Sante". Vanity Fair. January 20, 2022. Retrieved May 2, 2022.
  17. "The 10 Best Books of 2024". The New York Times. December 3, 2024. Retrieved December 3, 2024.
  18. ^ Garner, Dwight (February 3, 2024). "What It's Like to Transition in Your Late 60s". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved February 27, 2024.
  19. Di Piero, W.S. (March 8, 1998). "In the Flea Market of the Mind". New York Times. Retrieved September 26, 2021.
  20. Garner, Dwight (January 15, 2010). "The Reading Life: Postcards From the Edge". New York Times. Retrieved September 25, 2021.
  21. Haskell, Molly (October 30, 2015). "'The Other Paris', by Luc Sante". New York Times. Retrieved September 25, 2021.
  22. Garner, Dwight (August 8, 2022). "How New York City Got Its Fresh Water". The New York Times.
  23. "A gender-swapping photo app helped Lucy Sante come out as trans at age 67". National Public Radio. February 21, 2024.
  24. Swanson, Carl (February 9, 2024). "Lucy Sante: Here She Comes Now". Vulture. Retrieved February 27, 2024.
  25. "The Unknown Soldier". This American Life. Retrieved September 25, 2021.
  26. Johnson, Marilyn (September 2, 2007). "Haiku Journalism". New York Times. Retrieved September 24, 2021.
  27. "Luc Sante: Some Recent Collages, August 1–September 1, 2020". Jamesfuentes.online. Retrieved September 30, 2024.
  28. Steinhauer, Jillian; Heinrich, Will; Schwendener, Martha (August 19, 2020). "3 Art Gallery Shows to See Right Now". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved August 20, 2020.
  29. "Luc Sante, 1989 Winner in Nonfiction". Whiting Foundation. Retrieved September 23, 2021.
  30. "Luc Sante". John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. Archived from the original on May 2, 2022. Retrieved September 24, 2021.
  31. "Award Winner: Luc Sante". American Academy of Arts and Letters. Retrieved September 24, 2021.
  32. "Grammy winners, Anthology of American Folk Music". Grammy. Retrieved March 5, 2015.
  33. "2010 Infinity Award: Writing". International Center of Photography. February 23, 2016. Retrieved September 24, 2021.
  34. "The New York Public Library's Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers Announces 2012-2013 Fellows". NYPL. Retrieved November 28, 2023.
  35. ^ "Lucy Sante – MacDowell Fellow in Literature". MacDowell. Retrieved November 28, 2024.
  36. "VS-correspondent Björn Soenens benoemd tot Ridder in de Kroonorde". VRT News (Belgium). September 20, 2023. Retrieved December 10, 2024.

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