
Hustvedt was born in Northfield, Minnesota. Her father Lloyd Hustvedt was a professor of Scandinavian literature, and her mother Ester Vegan emigrated from Norway at the age of thirty. She holds a B.A. in history from St. Olaf College and a Ph.D. in English from Columbia University; her thesis on Charles Dickens was entitled Figures of Dust: A Reading of Our Mutual Friend. Hustvedt has mainly made her name as a novelist, but she has also produced a book of poetry, and has had short stories and essays on various subjects published in (among others) The Art of the Essay, 1999, The Best American Short Stories 1990 and 1991, The Paris Review, Yale Review, and Modern Painters. Like her husband Paul Auster, Hustvedt employs a use of repetitive themes or symbols throughout her work. Most notably the use of certain types of voyeurism, often linking objects of the dead to characters who are relative strangers to the deceased characters (most notable in various facits in her novels The Blindfold and The Enchantment of Lily Dahl) and the exploration of identity. She has also written essays on art history and theory (see "Essay collections") and painting and painters often appear in her fiction, most notably, perhaps, in her novel, What I Loved. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband, writer Paul Auster, and their daughter, singer and actress Sophie Auster.
Series
Books

The Blindfold
1992

America - Numéro 3
2017

Mysteries of the Rectangle
Essays on Painting
2005

READING TO YOU
1983

Hjemlandet og andre fortellinger
2019

The Shaking Woman, or A History of My Nerves
2009

What I Loved
2002

A Plea for Eros
Essays
2005

Living, Thinking, Looking
2012

The Blazing World
2014

A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women
Essays on Art, Sex, and the Mind
2016

The Enchantment of Lily Dahl
1996

The Summer Without Men
2011

The Delusions of Certainty
2016

Yonder
Essays
1998

The Sorrows of an American
2008

Memories of the Future
2019

Mothers, Fathers, and Others
Essays
2021