Lydia Millet on Risking Earnestness

It’s not that I don’t ever write harshly now, or ever use humor. But I always want first to love something— in the world and in my work. I wish first to love something.

Lydia Millet has written more than a dozen novels and story collections, often about the ties between people and other animals and the crisis of extinction. Her novel A Children’s Bible was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2020. Her story collection Fight No Morereceived an Award of Merit from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2019, and her collection Love in Infant Monkeys was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2010. She also writes essays, opinion pieces and other ephemera and has worked as an editor and staff writer at the Center for Biological Diversity since 1999.