Darcey Steinke
“In our culture, people that are different are a real flash point in what we think about ourselves, what we think about God. The idea, “Does God exist if they made this person?” Or, “Does everyone need to look like us to be us?” It’s not about that at all. It is so much more about who we are and what it is to be human.”
“Many days I believe menopause is the new (if long overdue) frontier for the most compelling and necessary philosophy; Darcey Steinke is already there, blazing the way. This elegant, wise, fascinating, deeply moving book is an instant classic. I’m about to buy it for everyone I know.”
“I hope that Steinke’s book, which I consumed hungrily, will encourage a wave of work by and about women undergoing what is, quite literally, a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Steinke makes the case that the inexorable slide away from fertility is a rebirth of agency, and her book is the fruit of the very creativity it describes”
“Simultaneously contemplative and messily visceral, this extraordinary fugue on menopause, a book ‘situated at the crossroads between the metaphysical and the biological,’ centers on the experience of the aging woman ... [Steinke’s] ability to translate physical and emotional experiences into words will make menopausal readers feel profoundly seen and move others.”
Darcey Steinke is the author of Flash Count Diary: Menopause and the Vindication of Natural Life (Sarah Crichton Books, 2019), which Elizabeth Gilbert called, “a searingly intelligent, richly imagined, deeply moving memoir.” Other books include the memoir, Easter Everywhere (Bloomsbury, 2007) and five novels: Sister Golden Hair (Tin House Books, 2014), which “feels like a classic coming of age novel,” according to the Los Angeles Times, Milk (Bloomsbury, 2005), Jesus Saves (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1997), Suicide Blonde (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1992), and Up Through the Water (Doubleday, 1989). Her books have been translated into ten languages, and her writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Boston Review, Vogue, Spin Magazine, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, and The Guardian. Her web story “Blindspot” was a part of the 2000 Whitney Biennial.
In an interview with Image, Steinke was asked about the structure of Flash Count Diary: “I always wanted to write a book in little chunks. I’ve been very excited by books that have done this—Maggie Nelson’s books, Renata Adler’s Speedboat. I think this form fits me better than a linear form does. I have a very discursive mind. But I felt like I had to write my way into the form with Flash Count Diary. For a long time, I struggled to write my way out of the linear form I was trying to impose on the book. I’m proud of how much of myself I was able to bring to the book, and also of how much weird ground it covers. I remember sitting at my desk thinking, “Am I going to be able to do this?” I wanted to be able to write a book that truly showed the movement of my mind, and this book feels like a step forward in that direction. Now, I want to continue writing in this way, gathering things that are congruent in emotion or subject matter, but not necessarily congruent in time.”
She is a graduate of Goucher College and the University of Virginia, where she received a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing. She has been both a Henry Hoyns and a Stegner Fellow, and a Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi. She has taught at the New School, Columbia University School of the Arts, New York University, Princeton, and the American University of Paris. She lives with her husband in Brooklyn.
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