Photo: Theo Cote

Mark your calendars: on Tuesday, April 5, 2016, at Cipriani 42nd Street, The Paris Review will honor Lydia Davis with the Hadada Award at our annual gala, the Spring Revel.

The Hadada is our lifetime-achievement award, presented each year to a distinguished member of the writing community who has made a strong and unique contribution to literature. Previous recipients include John Ashbery, Joan Didion, Paula Fox, Norman Mailer, Peter Matthiessen, George Plimpton (posthumously), Barney Rosset, Philip Roth, Norman Rush, James Salter, Frederick Seidel, Robert Silvers, and William Styron. 

It’s only fitting that Lydia Davis should join their ranks. Her history with the Reviewbegins in 1983, when we published her story “Break It Down”; she’s since contributed some of our most beloved stories, including “If at the Wedding (At the Zoo),” “Ten Stories from Flaubert,” and, most recently, “The Seals.” She’s curated a portfolio of Dutch scenes and written for the Dailyabout translating Madame Bovary; earlier this year she was interviewed for our Art of Fiction series.

Davis is the author of one novel, The End of the Story, and six story collections. Her translations from the French include new versions of Swann’s Wayand Madame Bovary. She received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2003 and is the recipient of the 2013 Man Booker International Prize. She was recently made an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government.

We’re delighted to add the Hadada to her long list of honors, and we hope you’ll join us in April to celebrate her remarkable career.