Celebrated novelist Jami Attenberg’s new memoir I Came All This Way to Meet You details a life on the road and the many ways one can create a home. An invigorating race through the varied places and spaces temporarily inhabited by Attenberg before moving on, the book celebrates the rejection of a conventional life in favor of spontaneity and creativity. Throughout it all, we learn, Attenberg found solace in writing: in lieu of a static life, she sought stability in the practice of her craft. Though her subjects and techniques have changed across time, the very activity of putting the pen to paper has remained constant. Attenberg, in conversation with author Lauren Collins, will discuss the meandering trajectory of life and the many roads taken to arrive back at herself.
About the speakers:
Jami Attenberg is a New York Times bestselling author of seven books of fiction, including The Middlesteins and All Grown Up, and, most recently, a memoir, I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home. She has written for the New York Times Magazine, the New Yorker, the Wall Street Journal, the Sunday Times, and the Guardian. Her work has been published in sixteen languages. She is also the creator of the annual online group writing accountability project #1000wordsofsummer. She lives in New Orleans.
Lauren Collins began contributing to the New Yorker in 2003 and became a staff writer in 2008. She is the author of When in French: Love in a Second Language, which the Times named as one of its 100 Notable Books of 2016. She is working on a second book, about a coup d’état perpetrated by white supremacists in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1898, and its effects on the city during the past 120 years.
Important information: The discussion will be available both online and in person. While the conversation will happen in person (Attenberg and Collins 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.
This event requires advance registration.
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