About
Anca L. Szilágyi is a fiction writer and essayist. Her work appears in Orion Magazine, Lilith Magazine, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and Electric Literature, among other publications. Anca is the recipient of grants and fellowships from Vermont Studio Center, 4Culture, Made at Hugo House, and the Jack Straw Cultural Center. She was awarded the inaugural Artist Trust / Gar LaSalle Storyteller Award. Shelf Awareness called her novel Daughters of the Air "a striking debut from a writer to watch" and Buzzfeed Books called Dreams Under Glass "a novel for our modern times."
Featured Work
Dreams Under Glass
As the economy collapses around her in 2008 New York City, recent art school graduate Binnie takes a job as a paralegal to pay the bills. As her art projects languish on the back burner, she begins to obsessively imagine her daily grind expressed in unsettling and sometimes violent dioramas. Somehow, someday, she’ll find the time to construct them. In the meantime, she’ll walk this unsatisfying tightrope between financial stability and the life of a working artist.
But after a shocking and surreal death occurs at the law firm, Binnie wonders if her frustration is pushing her darkest imaginings into life.
Other Works
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Daughters of the Air
2017
Awards and Recognition
- 2015 Artist Trust / Gar LaSalle Storyteller Award
- 2015 Jack Straw Fellowship
- 2014 4Culture Art Project Award
- 2012-13 Made at Hugo House Fellowship
- 2007 Vermont Studio Center Artist's Grant
- 2017 Lilith Magazine Fiction Prize
Press and Media Mentions
- "Anca Szilágyi wins the first Gar LaSalle Storyteller Award" by Paul Constant, The Seattle Review of Books
- “Anca Szilágyi’s Daughters of the Air is a fantastic debut…a product of alchemy, a creation of unearthly talents.” -Paul Constant, The Seattle Review of Books, “2017 in Review: The Seattle Novels That Made My Year”
- “A striking debut from a writer to watch, Daughters of the Air is gritty yet gorgeous, severe yet convivial, as it navigates uncertain times in a treacherous world. ” -Dave Wheeler, Shelf Awareness
- “Anca L. Szilágyi’s intense debut novel, ‘Daughters of the Air,’ locates a deeply personal story against the surreal backdrop of [Argentina’s Dirty War].” -Ellen Emry Heltzel, The Seattle Times
- “Dreams Under Glass captures both the struggle between art and economic stability and the deeply precarious nature of simply staying alive. A novel for our modern times.” -Wendy J. Fox in Buzzfeed Books
- “Szilágyi is a confident writer with a crisp, clean voice and deep empathy for her characters. ‘Dreams Under Glass’ may deal with familiar themes, but Szilágyi treats them with authenticity and grace. In a genre that can err toward cynicism, this comes across as revelatory.” -Mara Sandroff in Newcity
- “Zigzagging between playfulness and despair, Dreams Under Glass asks how the fantasy of making art compares with the reality, leaving the reader to answer. But not without a hint from Binnie, who tries to explain herself to her lover: ‘I just want to live a life that feels alive.’” -Amy Reardon in Barrelhouse
- “Thanks to her remarkable attention to detail and naturalistic dialogue, Szilágyi seems able to transform anything, no matter how modest—even discarded on the street—into an artistic statement.” -Alex Carrigan in Necessary Fiction
