One of Brooklyn’s most celebrated literary marriages is about to get balled up and tossed in the wastepaper basket.
Page Six has learned that Emily Gould and Keith Gessen, who married in 2014, are gearing up for a divorce.
The pair was once described by Vanity Fair as suffering among their peers because of their envy-inducing dose of “precocious literary success combined with sex appeal and self-regard.”
It’s unclear why the couple, who have two children, are calling it quits. But a lengthy profile of Gould, 40, and Gessen, 47, in New York Magazine in May hinted at difficulties in their union.
Profiler Elizabeth Weil described their home life as “a three-ring performance of domesticity” and said that Gould was “battling creative territorialism and envy” ahead of the publication of Gessen’s third novel, “Raising Raffi: The First Five Years,” about parenting.
Gessen is also an accomplished translator, founder of magazine n+1 and an assistant professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
Gould has written three books, including the memoir “And the Heart Says Whatever” and the novel “Friendship.”
The story also said that the $75,000 advance that “Raising Raffi” brought in wasn’t a financial boost for the family, and Gould has written about how she ended up in debt after getting a $200,000 advance for her first novel “Hex Education” in 2007, and how, after it flopped, it “essentially [guaranteed] that no one will ever pay me that kind of money to write a book again.”
She has also said that Gessen funded her life for several years early in their relationship.
Another little wrinkle in their relationship, which Gould has revealed in an essay, is that their romance was rocked shortly before their marriage by the revelation Gessen had donated sperm to his sibling’s partner, who became pregnant. (His sibling is the writer Masha Gessen.)
Gessen and Gould didn’t respond to a request for comment.