Background

Lucia Nevai was born Lucia Lynner on September 11, 1945, in Des Moines, Iowa, United States to the family of Darwin Thomas Lynner and Ruth Marcella Courson.

Education

Lucia Nevai graduated from the New School for Social Research with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1967.

Career

Lucia Nevai's winning volume of stories, Star Game, was published by the University of Iowa Press in 1987. A Kirkus Reviews contributor noted the works' competence but regretted that some of the stories leaned too heavily on their messages, while others engaged unsuccessfully in “the comedy of rural poor whites.” Best in the collection, according to the critic, were the stories “The Nile,” a “fully fleshed” tale of a woman who realizes she has never loved her husband; “Baby Wood,” an “unpretentious” story of a girl approaching adolescence; and “Mr. Feathers,” a story of an illicit affair that leads to murder, which the Kirkus Reviews critic praised for its “Dreiser-toned naturalism.”

A decade later, the second collection of stories, Normal, was published. More than one reviewer noted that many of the characters in her stories are decidedly bizarre. Nevai is ironically showing that extreme, ugly behavior is too often taken as normal in our society. The twelve stories deal with interpersonal dysfunction, often as seen through the eyes of social workers investigating cases; they are, in the main, quite short, terse, and witty. Kitty Guckenberger in the Boston Book Review stated that each story is “remarkable: some are startling, some are deceptive, and some are so short that readers will finish them before recognizing Nevai’s speedy characterization and economy.” Asserting that “Nevai’s most striking characteristic is her unexpected humor,” Guckenberger hailed the writer for defying expectations within her genre with these “tiny and explosive” tales. The reviewer singled out “The Talking Woman,” a gruesomely comic story of a man who is bothered by a talkative woman during a white-water rafting excursion, as “perhaps the best example of Nevai’s trademark coupling of humor and tragedy.”

For Jonathan Miles, writing for Salon online magazine, the stories “Monsieur Alle” and “Close” achieve a “dizzying level” of perfection akin to the work of Raymond Carver or Tennessee Williams. In “Monsieur Alle,” a Haitian-born social worker in New York is beset by a dysfunctional postmodern extended family. In “Close,” which was first published in the New Yorker and later anthologized in a volume of short stories about AIDS, a therapist returns home for the funeral of her brother and finds herself panicking as she traces their routes on an in-flight airline magazine’s map. Advising that some of the stories suffered from overambition or clumsiness, Miles said, “But these missteps are exceptions. Lucia Nevai is a writer of uncommon depth and fluency. What she gives us in Normal is a brutally accurate snapshot of the American family at the fin de siecle never, for a moment, uninteresting.” A reviewer, for Publishers Weekly, however, believed that some stories displayed “obvious symbolism” or unconvincing narrative voices, nevertheless, she stated that “Nevai is clearly a writer of uncommon potency and reach.” Steinberg added that “Nevai’s descriptions of loneliness and emotional isolation can be heartbreaking.” A Kirkus Reviews critic believed that some of the stories needed further development, while others displayed cynicism or glibness. However, the reviewer noted that “the strongest stories here make it clear that Nevai is a real talent with a ready wit and a steady gaze.”

Nevai's short stories have appeared in Tin House, Iowa Review, Zoetrope All-Story, the New Yorker, Glimmer Train, and other literary magazines.

Achievements

• Lucia Nevai won acclaim for her short stories when she became the nineteenth winner of the Annual Iowa Short Fiction Award, given by the prestigious Iowa Writers Workshop.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Seriously

    (Moving to the tiny upstate New York community of Dustin, ...)

    2004
  • Salvation

    (Slightly malformed, very brilliant, Crane Cavanaugh is bo...)

    2006
  • Star Game

    (Fourteen stories deal with a couples travels in Egypt, an...)

    1987
  • Normal

    (You won't find storybook families in these twelve wonderf...)

    1997
  • Best Friends 1983
  • Jill's Special Summer 1991

• publication

  • Glimmer Train Stories, #54

    (Twelve great new short stories by literary luminaries and...)

    2005
  • Glimmer Train Stories, #54

    (Literary short stories by established and emerging writers.)

    2005

Connections

Lucia Lynner married Andrew Nevai on July 6, 1968. They divorced in September 1984. They have two children: Nandor and Matthew.

Father:

Darwin Thomas Lynner

Mother:

Ruth Marcella Courson

Son:

Nandor Nevai

Son:

Matthew Nevai

husband:

Andrew Nevai

References

• Contemporary Authors, Vol. 166 This volume of Contemporary Authors contains biographical information on approximately 300 modern writers.
  1998