"les Rencontres" - interview with Lauren Elkin

Listen to author and critic Erica Wagner in conversation with Lauren Elkin, writer of “Scaffolding”, her first novel published by Chatto & Windus in 2024 which raises questions about marriage, fidelity and abortion. Through this conversation with Erica Wagner, Lauren Elkin discusses her writing process and the influence of her experience as a researcher on her work as a novelist. Together, they also talk about Paris, the city where the story takes place and where Lauren Elkin lived for many years, the feminist movements that inspired her as well as her conception of love.

As part of the Rendez-vous littéraires rue Cambon [Literary Rendezvous at Rue Cambon], the podcast "les Rencontres" highlights the birth of a writer in a series imagined by CHANEL and House ambassador and spokesperson Charlotte Casiraghi.

(00:00) Introduction

(00:56) Presentation of Lauren Elkin and her novel “Scaffolding” by Erica Wagner

(04:10) On the author’s early vocation as a writer

(05:16) Exploring real life with fiction

(06:08) On writing within two time frames

(07:24) On choosing Belleville, Paris as the backdrop of her novel

(10:07) The difference between writing fiction and non-fiction

(11:56) On her literary and cultural influences for this novel

(13:38) The importance of psychoanalysis in her novel

(15:51) Reading an extract of “Scaffolding” by Lauren Elkin

(17:40) On the writing process of her novel

(20:31) On feminism

(23:35) The most challenging aspects of writing

(25:26) On knowing when a book is finished

(26:01) On the reception of the book

(32:28) The ending questionnaire of “les Rencontres”

Lauren Elkin, Scaffolding © Lauren Elkin, 2024.

Excerpt from Scaffolding by Lauren Elkin. Copyright © 2024 by Lauren Elkin. Used by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. All Rights Reserved

Copyright © Deborah Levy, used by permission of The Wylie Agency, LLC

Lauren Elkin, Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London, © Lauren Elkin, 2016. Vintage, 2017

Lauren Elkin, Flaneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New Yok, Tokyo, Venice and London by Lauren Elkin. Copyright © 2016 by Lauren Elkin. Used by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. All Rights Reserved

© PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay

Michelle Perrot The Bedroom, An Intimate History, Translation by Lauren Elkin, © Yale University Press, 2018

Histoire de chambres, Michelle Perrot © Éditions du Seuil, 2009, Points, 2018

Claude Arnaud, Jean Cocteau: A Life, Translation by Lauren Elkin and Charlotte Mandell, © Yale University Press, 2016

Claude Arnaud, Jean Cocteau © Éditions Gallimard, 2003

© French-American Foundation – United States Translation Prize

Lauren Elkin, No 91/92: notes on a Parisian commute, published by Les Fugitives, London, in 2021

Lauren Elkin, Art Monsters: Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art, © Lauren Elkin 2023

Victor Hugo, Les Misérables, 1862

Elizabeth Bowen, The House in Paris, © Elizabeth Cameron, 1935, Copyright © renewed by Elizabeth D. C. Cameron 1963

Georges Perrec, Ellis Island, P.O.L, 1995

Mayra Davey, Index Cards: Selected Essays, © New Directions, 2020

Mary Beard, Women & Power: A Manifesto, © Profile Books, 2017

James Wood, How Fiction Works, © Wylie Agency

How Fiction Works by James Wood, Copyright © 2008 by James Wood. Used by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. All Rights Reserved