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Biography
American

Mary Gaitskill

1954

Mary Gaitskill is an American novelist and short-story writer whose fiction explores the intersection of sexuality, power, vulnerability, and emotional violence with an unflinching precision that has few parallels in contemporary American fiction. Bad Behavior (1988), her debut story collection, became a defining text of late-1980s literary culture. Her novels Two Girls, Fat and Thin (1991), Veronica (2005), and The Mare (2015) confirm her as one of the most psychologically acute writers of her generation.

Past sales0
PeriodContemporary
NationalityAmerican
1. Biography

A short life of the author

Mary Gaitskill (b. 11 November 1954) was born in Lexington, Kentucky. She ran away from home as a teenager, worked as a stripper and a prostitute, and subsequently earned a degree from the University of Michigan. These early experiences — and the psychological complexity they revealed — became the raw material for her fiction.

Life and Career

Bad Behavior (1988) — her debut story collection — was a sensation. The stories, set in the demimonde of 1980s New York, are about sex, power, and the ways people use and are used by each other. They are not sensational: Gaitskill’s style is precise and emotionally restrained, which makes the content more disturbing. “Secretary” — about a masochistic relationship between a young woman and her employer — was adapted into a 2002 film.

Two Girls, Fat and Thin (1991) — her first novel — explores the legacy of a figure resembling Ayn Rand through two women whose lives intersect. Because They Wanted To (1997) — her second story collection — deepened her reputation.

Veronica (2005) — about the friendship between a former model and a proofreader dying of AIDS — was a National Book Award finalist and is her most accomplished novel: a meditation on beauty, cruelty, illness, and the passage of time, told in prose of extraordinary sensory precision.

Major Works and Themes

Gaitskill writes about power dynamics in intimate relationships — about submission and dominance, vulnerability and cruelty, desire and shame. Her fiction insists that these dynamics are more complex than any ideology can accommodate. Her characters are never simply victims or aggressors; they are both, simultaneously, and Gaitskill refuses to simplify their experience.

Key Works

  • Bad Behavior (1988)
  • Veronica (2005) — National Book Award finalist
  • The Mare (2015)

Collecting Gaitskill

Bad Behavior (1988, Poseidon Press/Simon & Schuster) — the debut — brings $40–$150. Veronica (2005, Pantheon) brings $20–$60. Gaitskill signs at readings and book events. First editions are available but increasingly collected.