American poet, [essayist] and novelist of [Norwegian ancestry], born in [Northfield], [Minnesota] in 1955. Her father Lloyd Hustvedt was a professor of [Scandinavian literature], and her mother Ester Vegan emigrated from Norway at the age of thirty.

Hustvedt spent a year at a high school in [Bergen], [Norway] and studied at the traditionally Norwegian-American [St. Olaf College] in her hometown (class of '79). She reads Norwegian and occasionally translates from it, but writes in English. She made her debut with [Reading to you], a collection of poetry, in 1983. She lives in [Brooklyn] with her husband [Paul Auster] and two children, in a house that is "a reflection of Siri and her Scandinavian craving for order" (according to Auster in a NYTimes interview). The two met at a poetry reading in 1981.

Her husband's work might be more famous than hers, but Hustvedt's literature has earned its own attention. Myself, I enjoy her novels in particular. The cover of my paperback copy of [The Blindfold] features a comment by [Don DeLillo], calling it "a work of [dizzying intensity]" - and although these comments from other authors often seem [overly ecstatic] and [utterly unreliable], this is a description well deserved. Actually, I would claim that this is true of at least parts of her second novel as well.

Hustvedt also works as a [translator], she is at the [board of directors] of the [poetry project] at [St. Mark's Church] in New York, and she co-wrote the script for [Wayne Wang]'s 2001 movie [The Center of the World] with Wang, Auster and [Miranda July]. A French movie for television, [La chambre des magiciennes], is based on The Blindfold.

Books:
Reading to You - poems, 1983
The Blindfold - novel, 1992
[The Enchantment of Lily Dahl] - novel, 1996
[Breaking Ground, Breaking Silence]: The Story of New York's African Burial Ground - with [Joyce Hansen] and [Gary McGowan], 1998
[Yonder] - essays, 1998

Siri Hustvedt