Spring 2020 - Paula Regossy is a detective novel by literary artist Lynn Crawford. The story began with a painting, Pussy Galore by artist Peter Williams, which Crawford first saw on view at the gallery Paul Kotula Projects in Ferndale, Michigan, nearly a decade ago. Because the painting’s title referenced a female character from a James Bond film, Crawford was inspired to write a novel with a heroine named Paula Regossy, which is an anagram of Pussy Galore. She did not stop there. Each chapter in this book is Crawford’s personal but faithful response to artwork by various Detroit-based artists and creative spaces. She conversed with, ruminated on and scrutinized the art and/or the venue before she constructed the narratives. Paula Regossy would not exist without those people, works and places.
Fiction and arts writer Lynn Crawford is a founding board member of Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, a 2016 Rauschenberg Writing Fellow and a 2010 Kresge Literary Arts Fellow. Her work appears in various anthologies (Oulipo Compendium, Fetish, Brooklyn Rail, Fence) and journals (Art in America, Infinite Mile, Detroit Research, Hyperallergic, Tema, Celeste, McSweeney’s, Lilies and Cannonballs, Parkett, Bookforum, Detroit Metro Times). Most recently she contributed a story, “TNW and Me” to The-N-Word (Rotland Press, 2016), a monograph on painter Peter Williams; an essay to Detroit entitled "The Dream is Now,” and a collection of photographs of art, design and food by Michael Arnaud (Abrams Books).
Her books include, Solow (House of Outside Press/Hard Press Editions, 1995), Blow (Hard Press Editions, 1998), Fortification Resort (Black Square Editions, 2005) a series of art-related sestinas, Simply Separate People (Black Square Editions/Hammer Books, 2002), Simply Separate People, Two (Black Square Editions and the Brooklyn Rail, 2011) and Shankus & Kitto: A Saga (DittoDitto, 2016). Crawford earned a Bachelor's degree from University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and a Master’s degree in Social Work from New York University. She has worked in various psychiatric, community, hospital, museum and school settings. She lives with her family in a suburb north of Detroit.
Lynn Crawford understands better than any writer I know how profound, poignant, elegant meanings surface through our routines, our everyday lives. She is a true detective.
—Evelyn Hampton, author of Famous Children and Famished Adults: Stories
What's astonishing about Paula Regossy is the way it seems to connect effortlessly to the world at large—that’s not what one might expect from a book like this. Touching upon a range of topics from high art to popular culture, it is, on one level, an experimental book. Yet, unlike so much literature that falls into this category, it is powerfully moving. What’s more, fantastic things happen herein. Paula Regossy doesn't feel at all like fantasy or academic speculation. Although in it one might feel echoes of writers from J.G.Ballard to Samuel Beckett, Paula Regossy is very much Lynn Crawford’s own marvelous creation. And just as I am in awe of the world at large, I am in awe of Paula Regossy.
—Jose Padua, author of A Short History of Monsters
Trinosophes Contact: Rebecca Mazzei