Poetry and Fiction: The Artist’s Influence
Sunday, May 7 | 2:00 PM - 3:00 PMBrower Center - Goldman Theater
- Literary
- Poetry
- Women/Gender
The first time most American readers heard Selby Schwartz’s name was when her debut novel After Sappho was nominated for the 2022 Booker Prize. How lucky are we to have her living right here in California? Schwartz’s paean to early twentieth-century feminist creatives and their muse, Sappho, has received global accolades from the Booker judges and beyond, who have praised Schwartz’s fragmentary “speculative biographies” of well-known figures such as Virginia Woolf and Radclyffe Hall and lesser-known ones, such as Rina Faccio and Eleanora Duse. The ways in which these creative, unconventional women both supported and inspired one another’s art find echoes in Brenda Shaughnessy’s latest collection, Tanya. Here, the award-winning poet draws out her own sources of inspiration, both personal and intellectual, as she composes tercets in honor of the friends, sisters, mentors, artists, and others who have sustained her and her work. Join these two phenomenally gifted writers for a conversation across time and genre, led by writer and mentor extraordinaire Susan Griffin, who has influenced countless students and whose latest book is Out of Silence, Sound. Out of Nothing, Something.
Book signing information: Bookshop West Portal, at the venue