Kate Zambreno on Birth as Decreation

I literally feel like I have one month left of my life, even though I know that’s not true. It’s an extreme act of decreation, I think, giving birth.

It is an intimate, scary, grotesque crossing-over. It’s an incredibly precarious thing. I also think a birth experience is not really linear, it’s something that comes out later, I guess more like trauma.”

Kate Zambreno’s most recent book is the novel Drifts (Riverhead Books, 2020), which was named a most anticipated book by Entertainment Weekly, Refinery 29, Esquire, LitHub, Salon, The Millions, and Dazed. Her other books include Screen Tests (Harper Perennial, 2019), Appendix Project (Semiotext(e), 2019), Book of Mutter (Semiotext(e), 2017), O Fallen Angel (Harper Perennial, 2017), and Green Girl (Harper Perennial, 2014). Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, VQR, and elsewhere.

Kate Zambreno on Birth as Decreation

I literally feel like I have one month left of my life, even though I know that’s not true. It’s an extreme act of decreation, I think, giving birth.

It is an intimate, scary, grotesque crossing-over. It’s an incredibly precarious thing. I also think a birth experience is not really linear, it’s something that comes out later, I guess more like trauma.”

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