Writing for Our Lives: Storytelling, Resilience and the Power of Imagination
The interwoven set of “polycrises” we face today is so vast as to be hard for the head and the heart to truly comprehend. How do we make sense of it all? Where to turn for clarity in these complex times? The gripping power of stories to transform our collective understanding and opinions has been a throughline for all of human history, and it remains as true now as it ever has. Brilliant contemporary writers across genres are leading the way, crafting narratives that question, clarify, connect and expose the core issues we face. Join three insightful writers in a conversation about the essential role of art and imagination as we grapple with the increasingly strident cultural politics of the Anthropocene, the importance/hubris of human innovation and plumb the depths of our personal and collective reservoirs of resilience. Hosted by novelist/filmmaker Laleh Khadivi. With: poet/memoirist/essayist/activist Taylor Brorby; and fiction writer/professor Ramona Ausubel.
Magnes Museum
March 29th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm
Panelists
Taylor Brorby
Author & Activist
Boys and Oil: Growing Up Gay in a Fractured Land
Taylor Brorby is the author of: Boys and Oil: Growing Up Gay in a Fractured Land; Crude: Poems; Coming Alive: Action; and Civil Disobedience; and is co-editor of: Fracture: Essays, Poems, and Stories on Fracking in America. Taylor's work has appeared in many leading publications, including The NY Times, LitHub and Orion, and he has been supported by several prestigious fellowships, including from the MacDowell Colony and the National Book Critics Circle. He also serves on the editorial boards of Hub City Press and Terrain.org, is a contributing editor at North American Review, and teaches nonfiction writing at the University of Alabama.
Ramona Ausubel
Author and Professor
Ramona Ausubel, a professor in the MFA program at Colorado State University, is the author of 3 novels and 2 story collections, including, most recently, The Last Animal, chosen by NPR, Kirkus and O, the Oprah Quarterly as a best book of 2023. Her other books are: Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty, No One is Here Except All of Us, Awayland and A Guide to Being Born. Her work was chosen multiple times as a NY Times Book Review Editors’ Choice selection, and she has won a number of prestigious awards, including the PEN/USA Fiction Award and the Cabell First Novelist Award. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Tin House, One Story, Ploughshares and many other journals.
Laleh Khadivi
