Lucy Sante

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Lucy Sante (formerly Luc Sante; born May 25, 1954)^[1] is a Belgian-born American writer, critic, and artist. She is a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books. Her books include Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York (1991).

Born in Verviers, Belgium, Sante migrated to the United States in the early 1960s. She attended Regis High School in Manhattan, then Columbia University from 1972 to 1976, but did not take a degree. Since 1984 she has been a full-time writer. Sante worked in the mailroom and then as assistant to editor Barbara Epstein at The New York Review of Books. She became a regular contributor there, writing about film, art, photography, and miscellaneous cultural phenomena, as well as book reviews.^[2][3]

Her books, include Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York (1991), a non-fiction book documenting the life and politics of lower Manhattan from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century;^[4][5][6] Evidence (1992),^[6] the autobiographical The Factory of Facts (1998), Walker Evans (1999), Kill All Your Darlings: Pieces 1990-2005 (2007), Folk Photography (2009), and The Other Paris (2015). She co-edited, with writer^[7] Melissa Holbrook Pierson, O. K. You Mugs: Writers on Movie Actors (1998); Pierson was her former wife. Sante translated and edited Félix Fénéon's Novels in Three Lines (2007) for the New York Review Books (NYRB) series.

In the early 1980s, she wrote lyrics for the New York City-based band The Del-Byzanteens.^[8] Sante wrote the text for Take Me to the Water: Immersion Baptism in Vintage Music and Photography, a collection of historical photos of American baptismal rites, published by Dust-to-Digital in 2009.^[9]

She taught in the Columbia MFA writing program. Sante now lives in Ulster County, New York, and teaches writing and the history of photography at Bard College.^{[citation needed]}

She lived as a man until announcing on September 20, 2021, that she was transitioning to being a woman. She wrote on her Instagram account: "Yes, this is me, and yes, I am transitioning–I have joined the other team. Yes, I've known since at least age 11 but probably earlier and yes, I suppressed and denied it for decades.... I started...hormone replacement therapy in early May....You can call me Lucy (but I won't freak out if you misgender me) and my pronoun, thankyouverymuch, is she."^[10] In February 2022 she wrote an essay in the magazine Vanity Fair explaining her transition at almost 70 years old.^[11] Her 2024 memoir, I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition, follows her process of coming out.^[12]

Sante has been married twice, and has a son.^[12]

• Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux. 1991. ISBN 9780374194147.
• Evidence. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux/Noonday Press. 1992. ISBN 9780374523657.
• The Factory of Facts. New York: Pantheon. 1998. ISBN 9780679424109. Paperback edition: Vintage Books, 1999. ISBN 978-0679746508.^[13]
• Walker Evans. London: Phaidon. 1999. ISBN 9780714840475.
• Kill All Your Darlings: Pieces 1990-2005. Portland, OR: Yeti/Verse Chorus Press. 2007. ISBN 9781891241536.
• Folk Photography: The American Real-Photo Postcard, 1905–1930. Portland, OR: Yeti/Verse Chorus Press. 2009. ISBN 9781891241550. New edition: The Visible Spectrum, 2022. ISBN 9781953835185.^[14]
• The Other Paris. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux. 2015. ISBN 9780374299323.^[15]
• Maybe the People Would Be the Times. Portland, OR: Verse Chorus Press. 2020. ISBN 9781891241574.
• Nineteen Reservoirs: On Their Creation and the Promise of Water for New York City. New York: The Experiment. 2022. ISBN 9781615198658.^[16]
• I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition. New York: Penguin Press. 2024. ISBN 9780593493762.^[12][17][18]

• Twelve Sides. All-Seeing Eye. 2010.
• The Unknown Soldier. Lodger. 2018.^[19]
• My Life in Poetry, 1970-1981. All-Seeing Eye. 2022.
• Six Sermons for Bob Dylan. London: Tenement Press. 2024. ISBN 9781917304016.

• Fénéon, Félix (2007). Novels in Three Lines. New York: New York Review Books. ISBN 9781590172308.^[20]

• (with Melissa Holbrook Pierson): O.K. You Mugs: Writers on Movie Actors. New York: Pantheon. 1999. ISBN 9780375401015.

• Some Recent Collages, James Fuentes Gallery, 2020^[21][22]

• 1989: Whiting Award^[23]
• 1992–1993: Guggenheim Fellowship^[24]
• 1997: Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters^[25]
• 1998: Grammy for best album notes (Sante was one of the album note writers for the 1997 re-issue of the Anthology of American Folk Music)^[26]
• 2010: Infinity Award for writing, from the International Center of Photography, New York City^[27]
• 2012: Cullman Center Fellowship, New York Public Library^[28]
• 2023: Order of the Crown, Kingdom of Belgium^{[citation needed]}
• 2024: MacDowell Fellowship^[29]

• Official website
• "Contributions: Lucy Sante". The New York Review of Books.
• Lucy Sante at IMDb
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Sante, Luc. "Lost City Found: an interview with Luc Sante". Scan (Interview). Interviewed by Peter Doyle.
• Sante, Luc. "Roll Deep". Guernica Magazine (Interview). Interviewed by Suzanne Menghraj. Archived from the original on February 7, 2009.