In this hybrid talk and interview, writer and critic Rachel Cohen traces patterns of influence between visual artists and writers, drawing on examples from A Chance Meeting and her current research. Moving between figures from modernism to the present, she explores how ideas pass back and forth across forms, revealing the creative conversations that shape both art and literature.

About the speaker:

Rachel Cohen is the author of Austen Years: A Memoir in Five Novels, Bernard Berenson: A Life in the Picture Trade, and A Chance Meeting: American Encounters, reissued by New York Review of Books Classics in 2024. Her essays have appeared in the New Yorker, the NYRB, the Believer, The Yale Review, and Best American Essays, among others. A recipient of the Berlin Prize, Cohen is a fellow at the American Academy in Berlin in 2026, researching her next book Time in Pieces: Artists at Work. She is Professor of Practice in the Arts at the University of Chicago.

Important information: The discussion will be available both online and in person. While the conversation will happen in person (the speakers 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.