Writer and critic Lucy Sante

Lucy Sante is a Belgian-born transgender writer, art critic, and cultural commentator whose interests are surprisingly varied, including the Beastie Boys, early photography, and the history of New York City's reservoirs. She is also “one of the few living masters of the American language, as well as a singular historian and philosopher of the 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 for her collected essays, Kill All Your Darlings: Pieces 1990-2005 ( 2007). A second collection, Maybe the People Should Be the Times, was released in 2020. She wrote about her recent gender transition in the February 2022 issue of Vanity Fair.

The event, moderated by Joe Donahue of WAMC Northeast Public Radio, took place 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, the University Art Museum and the UAlbany Performing Arts Center in collaboration with WAMC Northeast Public Radio, this series features leading figures from various artistic disciplines in conversation with the host of WAMC’s “Roundtable” Joe Donahue on creative inspiration, craft and career.

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