Evan Lavender-Smith

Lavender-Smith's first book, From Old Notebooks, a cross-genre work combining elements of fiction, non-fiction, memoir, poetry and philosophy, was published in March 2010.[3][4] Writing in Rain Taxi, literary critic and Harvard University professor Stephen Burt called From Old Notebooks "an anti-masterpiece of an anti-novel," noting novelist David Markson's influence on the book.[5] In TriQuarterly, Barry Silesky wrote that From Old Notebooks "defies placement in a genre ... It is structured like poetry, in shifting events and tones without transition, though ... the language is ruthlessly prosaic."[6] Daniel Nester has referred to Lavender-Smith's From Old Notebooks, along with books by Jenny Boully, as combining "the best of the poetics of prose poetry with the I-centric essay," and counted Lavender-Smith and Boully as members of a "New Prose" movement in contemporary American literature.[7]

Lavender-Smith's second book, a short novel entitled Avatar, was published in February 2011.[8] The novel consists of a monologue thought or spoken by a character floating in space, between two points of light or "stars."[9][10]