Lauren Oyler

Lauren Oyler is an American author and critic. Her debut novel, Fake Accounts, was published in February 2021.

Early life and education
Oyler was born and raised in Hurricane, West Virginia, where she attended Hurricane High School and was named a National Merit Scholar. She graduated in 2012 from Yale University with a degree in English.

Career
After graduating, Oyler moved to Berlin where she worked as a freelance copy editor. In 2015, she moved to New York to become an editor at Broadly, the now-defunct site on gender and identity for Vice. She also co-authored two books with Alyssa Mastromonaco about Mastromonaco's time in the Obama administration. Her work has appeared in Harper's Magazine, The London Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, The New Yorker, The Baffler, and The New York Review of Books, among others. Her negative review of Jia Tolentino’s essay collection Trick Mirror generated so much traffic that it crashed The London Review of Books’ website.

Her debut novel, Fake Accounts, was published by Catapult in February 2021.

Her essay collection, No Judgement, was published by HarperOne in 2024 to mixed reviews. Several critics noted its lack of original research, dependence on Wikipedia and unsubstantiated arguments. In an interview with Oyler, writer Sheila Heti commented: "It seemed clear that many of your references came from Google Books searches or internet searches. It made me feel the relative shallowness of the contemporary mind that many of us share, compared to the intellectuals of the past who had a world of references inside them."

Publications

 * Fake Accounts, Catapult, 2021 ISBN 1948226928
 * Who Thought This Was a Good Idea?: And Other Questions You Should Have Answers to When You Work in the White House, second author with Alyssa Mastromonaco, Little, Brown Book Group, 2017.
 * So Here's the Thing...: Notes on Growing Up, Getting Older, and Trusting Your Gut, second author with Alyssa Mastromonaco, Twelve, 2019.