While in residence, Scholar of Note Ladee has been re-imagining society’s relationship to mythical women across literature, from Eurydice to the femme fatale, as a way of understanding our vision of Black women today. In conversation, Ladee will consider: what is our relationship to myth? What makes it eternally fascinating, relevant, and open to new interpretations? How does it reveal and conceal power, gender, and race? Moreover, who is the femme fatale, and what is her role in the noir genre? How can we explain current interest in noir, and what might this interest explain to us about ourselves? Join us to learn how Ladee works within literary history, adopting genres of mythology and crime, in order to reinvent the narratives marginalized women are forced into.

This event will be followed by a cocktail reception.

Learn more:

Ladee’s most recent short story collection imagines life in a Black neighborhood from the 1980’s through Obama’s election. Listen to what she said about it on NPR. 

The Rib King is a domestic tale turned revenge saga following the servants of an aristocratic family in decline in early-twentieth-century Chicago. Read a review in the Washington Post. 

Ladee’s debut novel, The Talented Ribkins, was inspired by a famous essay by philosopher and activist W.E.B. Du Bois entitled “The Talented Tenth”. Read what she has to say about Du Bois in the Guardian. 

About the speaker: 

Ladee Hubbard is the author of the novels The Last Suspicious Holdout, The Talented Ribkins, which received the 2018 Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence and the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award for Debut Fiction, and The Rib King. Her writing has appeared in Oxford American, Guernica, Virginia Quarterly and Callaloo among other venues. She is a recipient of a Berlin Prize, a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award. 

The American Library in Paris Scholar of Note program is generously sponsored by the de Groot Foundation.

Important information: The discussion will be available both online and in person. While the conversation will happen in person (Hubbard will appear in the Reading Room), the Library will stream the conversation on Zoom for a live viewing experience. Both in-person and online attendees will be able to pose questions.

Attendance at this event constitutes permission for your photograph or video to be taken at the event and used by the American Library in Paris for marketing, promotional, pedagogical, or other purposes.

Copies of The Last Suspicious Holdout will be available for purchase at the Library in the week leading up to this event and while the event takes place, generously provided by Smith&Son. All sales support this local independent bookstore.

Attendees will have the opportunity to have their copy signed following the conversation.