WRITERS SPEAK

SPEAKER: Elif Batuman

About the Speakers

Elif Batuman’s first novel, The Idiot, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and for the Women’s Prize. She is also the author of The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them. She has been a staff writer at the New Yorker since 2010, and holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Stanford University. Her second novel, Either/Or, was published in 2022.... Read more about Writers Speak | Elif Batuman in conversation with Beth Blum

WRITERS SPEAK

SPEAKER: Carmen Maria Machado

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About the Speakers

Carmen Maria Machado is the author of the bestselling memoir In the Dream House and the award-winning short story collection Her Body and Other Parties. She has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the winner of the Bard Fiction Prize, the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, and the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize, among others. Her essays, fiction, and criticism have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Granta, Vogue, This American Life, The Believer, Guernica, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the Guggenheim Foundation, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, and the Millay Colony for the Arts.... Read more about Writers Speak | Carmen Maria Machado in conversation with Laura van den Berg

WRITERS SPEAK

SPEAKER: Bernardine Evaristo

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About the Speakers

Bernardine Evaristo is the author of the 2019 Booker Prize-winning novel Girl, Woman, Other. Her numerous other works span the genres of fiction, verse fiction, short fiction, poetry, essays, literary criticism, and radio and theatre drama. Other fiction titles include Mr. Loverman, Blonde Roots, and Lara. Her first non-fiction book, Manifesto: On Never Giving Up, will be published in 2022 by Grove Atlantic. Her writing is celebrated for its experimentation, daring, subversion, and challenging the myths of Afro-diasporic identities and histories. A staunch and longstanding activist and advocate for the inclusion of artists and writers of color, Evaristo has initiated several successful schemes to ensure increased representation in the creative industries. She is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University London.... Read more about Writers Speak | Bernardine Evaristo in conversation with Gish Jen

The Hauser Forum

Speakers: Alison Bechdel, Hillary Chute

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Alison Bechdel will discuss some of the strategies she has used to navigate time in her various graphic memoirs. From the simultaneity of events in the unconscious, to the time-stamped documents of evidence, to the search for patterns in random, unspooling life, to the ultimate problem of mortality, Bechdel shows her work in search of visual solutions to lost time.... Read more about The Hauser Forum | Alison Bechdel on 'The Psychochronology of Everyday Life: Time in Graphic Memoir'

WRITERS SPEAK

SPEAKER: Hari Kunzru

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About the Speakers

Born in London, Hari Kunzru is the author of the novels The Impressionist, Transmission, My Revolutions, Gods Without Men, and White Tears, as well as a short story collection, Noise and a novella, Memory Palace. His most recent novel Red Pill was published in September 2020. He is an honorary fellow of Wadham College Oxford, and has received fellowships from the Cullman Center at the New York Public Library, the Guggenheim Foundation and the American Academy in Berlin. He is the host of the podcast Into The Zone from Pushkin Industries. He lives in New York City.
... Read more about Hari Kunzru in conversation with Duncan White

WRITERS SPEAK

SPEAKER: Rachel Kushner

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THE ENVIRONMENT FORUM

SPEAKER: Jennifer Wenzel, Columbia University

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In this talk, Jennifer Wenzel suggests that the impasse of the present is determined not only by petro-magic—fairy-tale promises of wealth without work—but also by a failure of the imagination in not reckoning with the transition from muscular energy to mineral energy. Professor Wenzel looks beyond portrayals of oil extraction in literature from the Niger Delta—the focus of her previous work—to examine the broader role of petro-magic in the fossil-fueled imaginary and the lived experience of hydrocarbon modernity. Petro-magic is effectively disenchanted when the make-believe world of the fossil fuel economy is normalized, rebalancing energy and benefits. She reflects upon "the pedestrian," both in terms of the ordinary inertia of taking-magic-for-granted and in terms of an alternative embodied politics of walking. Can we chip away at the impasse one step at a time?

Speaker: Joy Harjo

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The Harvard University Native American Program and the Harvard Art Museums present a reading and conversation with Joy Harjo, the 23rd poet laureate of the United States.... Read more about Native Americans and the National Consciousness: Virtual Reading and Conversation with Joy Harjo

Migration and the Humanities

Speakers: Natalie G. Diaz, Yannis Hamilakis, Maaza Mengiste

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Migration seems to be a historical category of analysis with no clear beginning, middle, and end. It has allowed humanistic inquiry to re-animate questions of displacements across time and space; intervene in multiple intersecting crises across the globe; renew inquiry into the myth and power of the nation-state, globality, and the international community; and rethink questions about global anthropogenic influence. However, migration can also construct binaries that enforce systems of dispossession and racial inequality. Moreover, much deeper histories of human migration underlie our present moment and compel scholars, writers, and curators to reckon with longer legacies of colonialism, empire, and state power that can be found in everything from material artifacts to national mythology.... Read more about Out of Place and Time: Thinking Migration through the Humanities

WRITERS SPEAK

SPEAKERS: Maaza Mengiste and Namwali SerpeLL

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... Read more about Writers Speak with Maaza Mengiste and Namwali Serpell

Speaker:  Álvaro Santana-Acuña, Whitman College

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Gabriel García Márquez’s novel One Hundred Years of Solitude seemed destined for obscurity upon its publication in 1967. The little-known author, small publisher, magical style, and setting in a remote Caribbean village were hardly the usual ingredients for success in the literary marketplace. Yet today it ranks among the best-selling books of all time. Translated into dozens of languages, it continues to enter the lives of new readers around the world. How did One Hundred Years of Solitude achieve this unlikely success? And what does its trajectory tell us about how a work of art becomes a classic?... Read more about Ascent to Glory: How One Hundred Years of Solitude Was Written and Became a Global Classic

WRITERS SPEAK

SPEAKER: Alice Oswald

"With Homer" – a conversation and reading with Teju Cole

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... Read more about Alice Oswald in conversation with Teju Cole