Homesick for Another World

Ottessa Moshfegh was born in Boston, MA in 1981. Her mother immigrated to the US from Croatia and her father from Iran, and both parents were musicians who taught at the New England Conservatory of Music. As a child, Moshfegh seemed likely to follow in her parents’ footsteps, studying both piano and clarinet. After graduating from Barnard College in 2002, she moved to Wuhan, China, where she taught English and worked at a punk bar. In 2006, she returned to New York and began working at Overlook Press, a publisher that specializes in books ignored by other presses. Moshfegh was immersed in the literary world of New York City, and her peers in publishing encouraged her to pursue writing full-time. In 2011, she completed an MFA from the prestigious creative writing program at Brown University. In 2012, The Paris Review published “Disgust,” which appears in Homesick For Another World as “Mr. Wu.” Moshfegh quickly became known as an important voice in American fiction, with a number of short stories appearing in The Paris Review, The New Yorker, and other prominent literary magazines.

Moshfegh’s fiction is characterized by its acute observation of the darkest corners of humanity. Her razor-sharp