Louisa Treger

Born in London, Louisa Treger began her career as a classical violinist. She studied at the Royal College of Music and the Guildhall School of Music, and worked as a freelance orchestral player and teacher.

Treger subsequently turned to literature, gaining a First Class degree and a PhD in English at University College London, where she focused on early twentieth century women’s writing. Married with three children, she lives in London.

Treger's new book, her first novel, is The Lodger.

From the author's Q & A with Amy Shearn at Electric Lit:

AS: Like me, you first discovered Dorothy Richardson while researching Virginia Woolf, who considered the now-forgotten Richardson an innovator of modernism. What made you actually seek out her novel Pilgrimage, and what struck you most about her writing?

LT: I sought out Pilgrimage because it seemed Dorothy Richardson was someone little-known, who had tried to do something extraordinary. It was her originality and courage that struck me the most. Her aim, in her words, was to “produce a feminine equivalent of the current masculine realism.” She was fearless about smashing narrative conventions like plot, structure and narrator, and she created a new, fluid way of writing that rendered the texture of a woman’s consciousness as it records life’s impressions; life’s minute to minute quality.

Dorothy’s desire to fix experience in words as vividly as it is lived particularly resonated with me. As she says in The Lodger: ‘How could she catch that moment; how to make the words come alive on paper, exactly as they were lived, directly from the center of consciousness?’ That’s what...[read on]

Visit Louisa Treger's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Lodger.

My Book, The Movie: The Lodger.

Writers Read: Louisa Treger.

Coffee with a Canine: Louisa Treger & Monty.

--Marshal Zeringue