Lydia Davis (born July 15, 1947,Northampton,Massachusetts, U.S.) is an American writer noted for heridiosyncratic and extremely short stories often characterized by vivid observations of mostlymundane and routine occurrences.

Davis grew up surrounded by readers, writers, and teachers. Her father, Robert Gorham Davis, taughtEnglish literature atSmith College when she was young. Her mother was a teacher and a writer. At age 10 Davis moved with her parents toNew York City, when her father took a teaching position atColumbia University. Beginning in 1965, Davis attendedBarnard College, and there during her freshman year she met writerPaul Auster, to whom she was briefly married (1974–78). In their mid-twenties Davis and Auster lived in Paris and the south of France, where they earned a meagre living by doing translation work. Translating remained a primary source of revenue for Davis, who counted books by Maurice Blanchot,Michel Leiris,Gustave Flaubert, andPierre-Jean Jouve among her many translations. Her versions ofMarcel Proust’sSwann’s Way (2003) and Flaubert’sMadame Bovary (2010) were published to great critical acclaim.

Davis’s unique brand of short stories began to take shape after she read American prose poetRussell Edson. Until then she had been trying to write more traditionally structured short stories but had been unsuccessful. Davis credited Edson with giving her carte blanche to write however she wished. That newfound freedom opened the door to radical experimentation with language and writing conventions. She found herniche in elevating thebanal into thought-provoking short narratives. Her stories can be so brief, sometimes just one line, that they have been variously referred to as poems, observations, parables, jokes,aphorisms, andanecdotes.

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Though acclaimed early on for her translations, Davis waited much longer to garner critical attention for her fiction. Her first story collection,The Thirteenth Woman, and Other Stories, was published in 1976, but it was not until 11 years later—withBreak It Down (1986), her fourth collection—that she was a finalist for a significant literary prize, the 1987 PEN/Hemingway Award. She subsequently gained a strong following, particularly among writers and literary critics, and some of her earlier collections were reissued. She is credited with having influenced contemporary authorsJonathan Franzen,Dave Eggers,Miranda July, andDavid Foster Wallace.

Davis’sThe Collected Stories, acompilation of stories written over 30 years, was published in 2009, and she published a book of new short stories,Can’t and Won’t, in 2014. In addition to stories, she published anovel,The End of the Story (1995), in which a writer tries to make sense of a breakup with a boyfriend by writing a novel about it. The narrative incorporates elements from Davis’sshort story “Story.”Essays One (2019) andEssays Two (2021) are collections of her nonfiction.

Davis was named a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government for her fiction and translations (1999), received aMacArthur Foundation fellowship (2003), and won an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award of Merit medal and the Man Booker International Prize (both 2013).