Meredith Talusan
Barryville, NY
Meredith Talusan is an interdisciplinary artist who works in literature, visual art, and dance, though she is primarily known publicly as an author and journalist. Her memoir, Fairest (Viking, 2020), was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards and named best book of the year by multiple outlets. Her fiction appears or is forthcoming in Guernica, The Boston Review, Epoch, GRAND, Catapult, The Rumpus, and BLR, and her nonfiction has been published in The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Guardian, WIRED, and Conde Nast Traveler, among many other publications. She has also contributed to ten books, including The New York Times bestselling Not That Bad (Harper Perennial, 2018) and the fiction anthology Anonymous Sex (Scribner, 2022). She received her MA in comparative literature and MFA in creative writing from Cornell University. As a dancer, Talusan trained for several years at the Merce Cunningham and Trisha Brown studios, and was a working board member for the Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art, Nature, and Dance for seven years, giving talks at the organization’s yearly summit, leading workshops, and facilitating group performances. As a visual artist, Talusan received her MFA in photography from the California College of the Arts and has exhibited in Boston, New York, and San Francisco, as well as photographed for Vice, Medium, and BuzzFeed News.
Photo by Gregory Kramer.
Events
- Artist Lab: Low-Stress Networking for Artists with Meredith Talusan September 21, 2023
Shadow Worker.
Shadow Worker.
The Shadow Worker: A Novel
Meredith Talusan is an interdisciplinary artist who works in literature, visual art, and dance, though she is primarily known publicly as an author and journalist.
Artist BioCora and Dana, two half-sisters from the Philippines, fuse their consciousness at 16 so they can maintain their bond when Cora immigrates to the US, using technology developed for American workers to collaborate with Global South labor. When the sisters’ combined acumen leads them to become CEO of the world’s leading digital-marketing firm, a young multibillionaire, Connor Versus, hires them to reverse the tide of climate change. While their efforts begin to prove effective, fractures form in the sisters’ relationship when Dana develops feelings for Connor while Cora finds herself attached to her childhood friend Emilia, a situation made more complex because Dana is trans. The sisters are eventually forced to decide whether to separate their minds for the sake of their attachments at the expense of compromising their work, and risking the planet’s fate.
