Lockwood on A.S. Byatt's Possession
Patricia Lockwood chooses A.S. Byatt’s Possession, a much-loved book that gave Lockwood ‘permission’ to pursue her literary passion: ‘it was not a waste of time, not a waste of life, to read’.
Patricia Lockwood
Booker Prize 2026 judge
Patricia Lockwood is an American novelist, poet and essayist
Lockwood’s books include the novel No One Is Talking About This, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2021, and was one of the New York Times Book Review’s Ten Best Books of 2021.
Her other books are the memoir Priestdaddy, one of the New York Times Book Review’s Ten Best Books of 2017; and the poetry collections Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals and Balloon Pop Outlaw Black.
Lockwood’s writing has appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker, the New Republic and the London Review of Books, where she is a contributing editor. Her most recent novel, Will There Ever Be Another You, was published in 2025. She lives in Savannah, Georgia.
Author photo © Grep Hoax
- Prizes judged
- The Booker Prize 2026
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The internet – in the form of social media, at least – is much more like fiction than it is anything else
All nominated books
Patricia Lockwood’s sincere and delightfully profane love letter to the infinite scroll, and a meditation on love, language and human connection
