Transnational Series presents: John Freeman in conversation at Brookline Booksmith Used Book Cellar

John Freeman in conversation with Krysten Hill

Dictionary of the Undoing

This event is co-sponsored by GrubStreet, one of the nation’s leading non-profit creative writing centers.

For John Freeman—literary critic, essayist, editor, poet, “one of the preeminent book people of our time” (Dave Eggers)—it is the rare moment when words are not enough. But in the wake of the election of 2016, words felt useless, even indulgent. Action was the only reasonable response. He took to the streets in protest, and the sense of community and collective conviction felt right. But the assaults continued—on citizens’ rights and long-held compacts, on the core principles of our culture and civilization, and on our language itself. Words seemed to be losing the meanings they once had and Freeman was compelled to return to their defense. The result is his Dictionary of the Undoing.

From A to Z, “Agitate” to “Zygote,” Freeman assembled the words that felt most essential, most potent, and began to build a case for their renewed power and authority, each word building on the last. The message that emerged was not to retreat behind books, but to emphatically engage in the public sphere, to redefine what it means to be a literary citizen.

With an afterword by Valeria Luiselli, Dictionary of the Undoing is a necessary, resounding cri de coeur in defense of language, meaning, and our ability to imagine, describe, and build a better world.

John Freeman is the editor of Freeman’s, a literary annual of new writing. His books include How to Read a Novelist and The Tyranny of E-mail, as well as Tales of Two Americas, an anthology of new writing about inequality in the U.S. today. Maps, his debut collection of poems, was published in 2017. His work has been translated into more than twenty languages and has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, andThe New York Times. The former editor of Granta and one-time president of the National Book Critics Circle, he is currently Artist-in-Residence at New York University.

Krysten Hill received her MFA in poetry from UMass Boston where she currently teaches. Her work can be found in apt, B O D Y, Boiler Magazine, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Word Riot, Muzzle, PANK, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Winter Tangerine Review and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the 2016 St. Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artist Award. Her chapbook, How Her Spirit Got Out, received the 2017 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize.

Launch Party for Erica Ferencik’s new novel, INTO THE JUNGLE

Please join me for a wild night in the rainforest! Just try surviving the dinner-plate sized spiders, limo-length anacondas, and shamans who, frankly, have it out for you! But have no fear, I’ll help you cope – with wine, gourmet pizza, and a slide show featuring the terrors and wonders of the most biodiverse place on earth – the Amazon rainforest. Oh yeah, and I might talk about my book a little too:)

CHAYA BHUVANESWAR in Conversation with CHRIS CASTELLANI at Brookline Booksmith

In sixteen remarkable stories, Chaya Bhuvaneswar spotlights diverse women of color–cunning, bold, and resolute–facing sexual harassment and racial violence, and occasionally inflicting that violence on each other. Winner of the 2017 Dzanc Short Story Collection Prize, White Dancing Elephants marks the emergence of a new and original voice in fiction and explores feminist, queer, religious, and immigrant stories with precision, drama, and compassion.

Join her for this reading with Christopher Castellani, renowned novelist and teacher of writing, whose work THE ART OF PERSPECTIVE will be brought into conversation with her story collection. He is the author of three critically-acclaimed novels, A Kiss from Maddalena (Algonquin Books, 2003)—winner of the Massachusetts Book Award in 2004— The Saint of Lost Things (Algonquin, 2005), a BookSense (IndieBound) Notable Book; and All This Talk of Love (Algonquin, 2013), a New York Times Editors’ Choice and finalist for the Ferro-Grumley Literary Award. The Art of Perspective: Who Tells the Story, a collection of essays on point of view in fiction, was published in 2016 by Graywolf Press. He has recently completed a new novel, Leading Men, for which he received Fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Leading Men will be published in February 2019 by Viking Penguin.

Transnational Literature Series at Brookline Booksmith presents: Olga Tokarczuk for FLIGHTS

Olga Tokarczuk will be in conversation with translator Jennifer Croft and writer Askold Melynczuk as part of the Transnational Literature Series. For more information, please contact series curator Shuchi Saraswat at shuchi@brooklinebooksmith.com.

Olga Tokarczuk is one of Poland’s most celebrated and beloved authors, a two-time winner of her country’s highest literary honor, the Nike. She is the author of eight novels and two short story collections, and has been translated into a dozen languages. Her work has appeared in n +1, BOMB, and Asymptote. Jennifer Croft is an American author, critic and translator who works from Polish, Ukrainian and Argentine Spanish. She was awarded the Man Booker International Prize along with Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk, for her translation of Flights. Askold Melnyczuk is an American writer whose publications include novels, essays, poems, memoir, and translations

About the book:

WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE

A visionary work of fiction with “echoes of Sebald and] Kundera . . . There’s] no better travel companion in these turbulent, fanatical times” (The Guardian). A seventeenth-century Dutch anatomist discovers the Achilles tendon by dissecting his own amputated leg. Chopin’s heart is carried back to Warsaw in secret by his adoring sister. A woman must return to her native Poland in order to poison her terminally ill high school sweetheart, and a young man slowly descends into madness when his wife and child mysteriously vanish during a vacation and just as suddenly reappear. Through these brilliantly imagined characters and stories, interwoven with haunting, playful, and revelatory meditations, Flights explores what it means to be a traveler, a wanderer, a body in motion not only through space but through time. Where are you from? Where are you coming in from? Where are you going? we call to the traveler. Enchanting, unsettling, and wholly original, Flights is a master storyteller’s answer.

Transnational Literature Series at Brookline Booksmith Presents: Dubravka Ugrešić and American Fictionary

Dubravka Ugrešić will be in conversation with translator Ellen Elias-Bursać as part of the Transnational Literature Series. For more information, please contact series curator Shuchi Saraswat at shuchi@brooklinebooksmith.com.

Dubravka Ugrešic was born in the former Yugoslavia (Croatia). She is a novelist, essayist, and literary scholar and the author of seven works of fiction and six collections of essays. She has won, or been shorlisted for, more than a dozen prizes, including the NIN Award, Austrian State Prize for European Literature, Heinrich Mann Prize, Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, Man Booker International Prize, and the James Tiptoe Jr. Award. In 2016, she received the Neustadt International Prize for Literature (the “American Nobel”) for her body of work. Ellen Elias-Bursać is an American scholar and literary translator. Specializing in South Slavic literature, she has translated numerous works from Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian.

About the book: 

Winner of the 2016 Neustadt International Prize for Literature

In the midst of the Yugoslav wars of the early 1990s, Dubravka Ugresic—winner of the 2016 Neustadt International Prize for Literature—was invited to Middletown, Connecticut, as a guest lecturer. A world away from the brutal sieges of Sarajevo and the nationalist rhetoric of Miloševic, she instead has to cope with everyday life in America, where she’s assaulted by “strong personalities,” the cult of the body, endless amounts of jogging and exercise, bagels, and an obsession with public confession.

Organized as a fictional dictionary, these early essays of Ugresic’s (revised and amended for this edition) are as pertinent to today’s America as when they were first published. It’s here, in these pieces filled with Ugresic’s unparalleled wit and devastating observations, that the comforting veil of Western consumerism is ripped apart as the mundane luxuries of the average citizen are contrasted with the life of a woman whose country is being destroyed.

Translated from the Croatian by Celia Hawkesworth & Ellen Elias-Bursać.

STEVE ALMOND in conversation with ROBIN YOUNG on “What the Hell Just Happened to Our Country”

Brookline Booksmith presents STEVE ALMOND, author of Candyfreak and Against Football as he discusses his latest, Bad Stories: What the Hell Just Happened to Our Country.

Bad Stories is Almond’s effort to make sense of our historical moment, to connect certain dots amid the deluge of hot takes and think pieces. He will be in conversation with WBUR Here & Now host, ROBIN YOUNG.

The Late Bloomers’ Club launch at Brookline Booksmith

USA Today bestselling author of The City Baker’s Guide to Country Living LOUISE MILLER will be celebrating the launch of her 2nd novel, The Late Bloomers’ Club, on Wednesday, July 18th at Brookline Booksmith.

Louise will be reading, answering questions, signing books and serving cake!

PAMELA DRUCKERMAN: There Are No Grown-Ups

Brookline Booksmith hosts PAMELA DRUCKERMAN, the best-selling author of Bringing Up Bébé. as she investigates life in her forties, and wonders whether her mind will ever catch up with her face.

This event is free and open to the public.

A Night of Memoir at Brookline Booksmith

Brookline Booksmith welcomes ANNA ORNSTEIN, reading from her memoir, My Mother’s Eyes: Holocaust Memories of a Young Girl and PHYLLIS SKOY, reading from her memoir, Myopia.

SAMANTHA IRBY at Brookline Booksmith

In her latest book, Meaty, SAMANTHA IRBY laughs her way through tragicomic mishaps, neuroses, and taboos as she struggles through adulthood. Updated with her favorite Instagramable, couch-friendly recipes, this much-beloved romp is a treat for anyone in dire need of Irby’s infamously scathing wit and poignant candor.