Thyrza Nichols Goodeve

Thyrza Nichols Goodeve is a writer, interviewer, artist, and teacher active in the field of contemporary art and culture. Biography Goodeve was born in Middlebury, Connecticut, where she lived until her family moved to Windham, Vermont. Her brother is actor Grant Goodeve. Her maternal great-great-grandfather was the Vermont politician and Union Army Colonel William T. Nichols, while her paternal great-great-grandfather was Orvil (sometimes spelled Orville) Grant, a younger brother of U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant. She attended the Westover School in Middlebury, Connecticut and Northfield Mount Hermon School (NMH) in Massachusetts. In 1975, through NMH, she attended the American School of Tangier where she met Paul Bowles and Mohammed Mrabet, key influences on her career as a writer. She received a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College (creative writing, film, philosophy), an M.A. from New York University (cinema studies), and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Cruz under Donna Haraway and James Clifford. She lives in Brooklyn Heights, New York. Writing and performance Goodeve is known both as an essayist and as an interviewer. She writes on diverse topics ranging from vaudeville to cyborgs to the art of doodling, and she has published in such respected periodicals as Artforum, Parkett, Art in America, Artbyte, The Guggenheim Magazine, The Village Voice, The Brooklyn Rail, Art Agenda, and Camerawork. From 2017 to 2019 she was the Senior Art Editor of The Brooklyn Rail, following which she became an Editor-at-Large. She has interviewed Matthew Barney, Yvonne Rainer, Ellen Gallagher, the Quay Brothers, McKenzie Wark, Tim Rollins and K.O.S., Aziz + Cucher, and Carolee Schneemann. Her book-length conversation with the influential science and technology scholar Donna Haraway offers a wide-ranging and intimate introduction to Haraway's challenging work. Among other things, she argues that science fiction offers a model for Haraway's imaginative theorizations. Goodeve has also written on Jeff Koons, Raymond Pettibon, Tony Oursler, Michael Joaquin Grey, Matthew Ritchie, Joseph Nechvatal, Heide Hatry, Eve Andrée Laramée, and Lesley Dill.