Drawing on the rhythms of epic poetry and alt rock, of everyday speech and folk song, of fireside whisperings and therapy sessions, Nina MacLaughlin, the acclaimed author of Hammer Head, recovers what is lost when the stories of women are told and translated by men. She breathes new life into these fraught and well-loved myths. In voices both mythic and modern, Wake, Siren revisits Ovid’s Metamorphoses: accounts of love, loss, rape, revenge, and change. It lays bare the violence that undergirds and lurks in the heart of Ovid’s narratives, stories that helped build and perpetuate the distorted portrayal of women across centuries of art and literature.

The Entre Nous series is co-organized by Columbia Global Centers | Paris, the Institute for Ideas and Imagination, and the American Library in Paris.

About the speaker:

Nina MacLaughlin is the author of Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung, a re-telling of Ovid’s Metamorphoses told from the perspective of the female figures transformed, as well as Summer Solstice: An Essay. Her first book was the acclaimed memoir Hammer Head: The Making of a Carpenter. Formerly an editor at the Boston Phoenix, she worked for nine years as a carpenter, and is now a books columnist for the Boston Globe.

Important information: This event will take place in person at Reid Hall | Columbia Global Centers at 4 rue de Chevreuse.

Access to this event requires registration through Columbia Global Centers | Paris. Click on the button below to reserve your place.