In Holler Rat, Anya Liftig’s recently published debut memoir, the writer and artist traces the many contradictions of her life—from her Appalachian childhood to her career as a performance artist, to a year-long period in which her life completely fell apart. Her story is a journey of catalysts, calamities, art-making and madness, and catharsis. Using her own book as a performance document, in Holler Rat (the performance) Anya Liftig performs a 6-hour reading of her memoir—the typical author appearance at a book launch elongated to absurdity—while moving around and taking up various positions on a basketball court empty of players and gameplay.
Anya Liftig is a performance artist and writer. Her works have been exhibited at TATE Modern, MOMA, Queens Museum, Movement Research, Performer Stammtisch Berlin, Performance Space London, and many other venues around the world. As a dancer and actress. Liftig’s work has been published and written about in theNew York Times Magazine, BOMB, The Wall Street Journal, Vogue Italia, PAJ, New York, Theater Magazine, and many others. Her experimental film and video work has been screened in festivals globally. Her essays have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and noted in Best American Non-Fiction. She is a Connecticut Council for the Arts Emerging Arts Fellow in Creative Writing, a recipient of a Franklin Furnace Award, and fellowships at MacDowell and Yaddo.
