Miranda July earned worldwide renown with her film Me and you and everyone we know from 2005, which she wrote, directed and starred in. The film received enthusiastic reviews, won several film festival awards, and grew into a sleeper hit. That success was completely unexpected: the idiosyncratic July has always slipped between the seams of different art formats, far away from the mainstream. She went on to produce two more films: The Future (2011) and Kajillionaire (2020), and penned the anthology No One Belongs Here More Than You (2007) and the novel The First Bad Man (2015). Her new novel All Fours will be released in June.

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July’s unconventional nature manifested itself at a young age: as a teenager she played in bands, made artistic home videos, and drew capacity crowds with her improvised stage plays. She never finished her studies, but in her 20s she earned renown with short stories in literary journals, official exhibitions, and online art projects. In the meantime, she paid the bills with odd jobs as a waitress, stripper and tastemaker for Coca-Cola.

Long before social media, she created the website Learning to love you more (2002-2009) as an online exhibition of the work of more than 8,000 artists. In 2014, she released the smartphone app ‘Somebody’, with which users could send a message to a friend, and another Somebody user nearby could personally read the message to the friend for whom the message was intended. The idiosyncratic project is typical for Miranda July: she utilised the convenience and speed offered by the smartphone to stimulate personal contact. And it was a huge success: thousands of people called total strangers to have them hand-carry a message to a friend or family member. 

‘Weird’ and ‘quirky’ are the two words most commonly used to describe July’s work. “In Miranda July’s universe, the most ordinary people seem like aliens who’ve lived on earth for years, but at crucial moments they act not quite appropriately”, wrote NRC film critic Dana Linssen about the characters in July’s films. The same applies to the characters in her novels. 

Her 2015 debut, The First Bad Man, introduces the neurotic, vulnerable singleton Cheryl and her two obsessions: a baby that she felt a special bond with as a child, and who she believes she recognises in another man’s sons, and Phillip, a member of the board of the women’s self-defence foundation whom she’s convinced she’d slept with in a previous life. “I’d never read such a hilarious story of pregnancy, birth and what follows, with all the American health care, psycho situations and meddlesomeness”, wrote VPRO talk show host Wim Noordhoek. “Reading July is like walking on eggshells; always balancing on the line between serious and slapstick.” 

Her second novel, All fours (De Bezige Bij), will appear in June. translated into Dutch (but with the same title) by Lydia Meeder and Gerda Baardman. This time the protagonist is a 45-year-old woman who spontaneously decides not to fly from Los Angeles to New York, but to travel by car instead. The long road trip you might expect never materialises, however, because after 20 minutes she takes a random exit, rents a room in a motel, and decides never to leave again. She re-furnishes the room and starts an affair with a younger man. But the reality of her life as a mother, spouse, and woman in menopause becomes impossible to ignore. “Deeply meaningful and deeply human, a brilliant work of art by a fearless mind”, said Emma Cline about All Fours, and Publisher’s Weekly, The Guardian and Oprah Winfrey all chose it as one of the most-anticipated books of the year.

On Saturday afternoon we’ll have a brief opportunity to share in Miranda July’s inimitable and unique spirit.

Seated event, seating is free. July will also sign copies after the Book Talk.

This programme will be hosted by ILFU in collaboration with Uitgeverij De Bezige Bij.

Films by Miranda July (including Kajillionaire) will be shown in advance in the Slachtstraat Filmtheater in Utrecht. Keep an eye on the socials and website https://www.slachtstraat.nl/ for the dates.