Laura van den Berg

Biography

Laura van den Berg is the author of five works of fiction, including The Third Hotel (FSG, 2018), a finalist for the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award, and I Hold a Wolf by the Ears (FSG, 2020). She is the recent recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Strauss Livings Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, and a literature fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.  

See Work

FICTION / Summer 2022

Fight Week

By Laura van den Berg ,  Illustration by Daryn Ray

On fight week, Kayla feels every muscle in her body harden. Electrical currents race around in her bloodstream; each movement is animated by a force that feels uncontrollable, uncontainable. Her coach keeps telling her to rest, to sleep...
ART / Spring 2020

Color Invocations

Illustrations by Beverly Acha ,  Essay by Laura van den Berg

The Practice of Looking Deeply

Left: mira, Anochecido Rosado, 2019. Oil on canvas, 22” x 20”. Right: mira, Noche Azul, 2019. Oil on canvas, 22” x 20”.
FICTION / Spring 2019

Hill of Hell

By Laura van den Berg ,  Illustration by Ryan Floyd Johnson

I had traveled up the Hudson Line at my friend’s invitation to deliver a lecture to his literature students at the college where he taught. There had been three people in attendance and one had fallen asleep halfway through. My friend had...

Illustration by Ryan Floyd Johnson