The author of Flâneuse talks to Sophie Mackintosh about the representation of the body in the history of feminist art, the subject of Lauren Elkin’s landmark new book Art Monsters.

Queer bodies, sick bodies, racialised bodies, female bodies – how do artists and writers, from Julia Margaret Cameron to Carolee Schneemann, celebrate and express the experiences of their bodies? Art Monsters is a daring and passionate intervention in how we think about art and the body. Described by Deborah Levy as ‘the Susan Sontag of her generation’, Elkin accompanies us into a world of ‘unruly bodies’.

Lauren Elkin is the author of several books, including Flâneuse: Women Walk the City, a Radio 4 Book of the Week, a New York Times Notable Book of 2017, and a finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel award for the art of the essay. Her essays on art, literature, and culture have appeared in the London Review of Books, the New York Times, Granta, Harper's, Le Monde and Frieze, among others. She is also an award-winning translator, most recently of Simone de Beauvoir's previously unpublished novel The Inseparables. After twenty years in Paris, she now lives in London.

Elkin will be talking to Sophie Mackintosh, author of three novels. Her first, The Water Cure, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won a Betty Trask Award. Her latest novel, Cursed Bread, was released in 2023.

More information on the event can be found here.