Rachel Kushner's NYC

I'm a big fan of the author Rachel Kushner -- her 2013 novel The Flamethrowers a personal favorite. She also has a new novel coming out called Creation Lake that I'm looking forward to reading and that's just been nominated for the Booker Prize.

Kushner is a California-native and -based writer but she spent about a decade in NYC in the 1990s. She recently wrote about her experiences living in the city as a transient resident and how, although she's neither from here nor stayed here, her memories of NYC remain close to her heart. 

For us NYC natives, this is and will always be home -- no matter how far we may stray from it.

But for people who were born and grew up elsewhere, then lived here for a while before moving home or moving on, experiencing NYC as a chapter in life is always a fascinating story. It's like they were dropped into the stream of a continuing soap opera, played their part, and then left while the storyline continued. Their time in NYC is finite, tied to a particular time in their and the city's life, and they are forever intertwined in a unique, unreproduceable way. What they remember about a city that's always changing but fixed in their minds is always something worth learning about.