Writer and critic Lucy Sante

Lucy Sante is a transgender, Belgian-born nonfiction writer, art critic, and cultural commentator of astonishingly wide interests, including the Beastie Boys, early photography, and the history of NYC reservoirs. She’s also “one of the handful of living masters of the American language, as well as a singular historian and philosopher of American experience” (Peter Schjeldahl of the New Yorker). As Luc Sante, she is best-known for Low Life (1991), about crime and entertainment in Old New York, 1840-1919, and her collected essays, Kill All Your Darlings: Pieces 1990-2005 (2007). A second collection, Maybe the People Would Be the Times, came out in 2020. She wrote about her recent gender transition in the February 2022 issue of Vanity Fair. The event, moderated by WAMC Northeast Public Radio's Joe Donahue, was held October 18, 2022, at the University at Albany. Major support for The Creative Life is provided by the University at Albany Foundation and University Auxiliary Services. Created and produced by the New York State Writers Institute, University Art Museum, and UAlbany Performing Arts Center in collaboration with WAMC Northeast Public Radio, this series features leading figures from a variety of artistic disciplines in conversation with WAMC’s “Roundtable” host Joe Donahue about creative inspiration, craft, and career.