- This event has passed.
FREEMAN’S: Best New Writings on LOVE
November 17, 2020 @ 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm PST
John Freeman with Robin Coste Lewis, Tommy Orange, and Matt Summell
This is a virtual event that will be hosted by Litquake and City Lights as part of the LITQUAKE 2020 Festival on the Zoom platform. You will need access to a computer or other device that is capable of accessing the internet. If you have not used Zoom before, you may consider referencing Getting Started with Zoom.
———-
Event is free, but registration is required.
(CLICK HERE) to register. (link to be posted soon!)
———–
(Click Here) to purchase book (link to be posted soon!)
———–
In a time of contentiousness and flagrant abuse, it often feels as if our world is run on hate. Invective. Cruelty and sadism. But is it possible the greatest and most powerful force is love? In the newest issue of this acclaimed series, Freeman’s Love asks this question, bringing together literary heavyweights like Tommy Orange, Anne Carson, Louise Erdrich, and Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk alongside emerging writers such as Gunnhild Øyehaug and Semezdin Mehmedinović.
Mehmedinović contributes a breathtaking book-length essay on the aftermath of his wife’s stroke, describing how the two reassembled their lives outside their home country of Bosnia. Richard Russo’s charming and painful “Good People” introduces us to two sets of married professors who have been together for decades, and for whom love still exists, but between the wrong pair. Haruki Murakami tells the tale of a one-night stand that feels like a dying sun.
Together, the pieces comprise a stunning exploration of the complexities of love, tracing it from its earliest stirrings, to the forbidden places where it emerges against reason, to loss so deep it changes the color of perception. In a time when we need it the most, this issue promises what only love can bring: a solace of complexity and warmth.
John Freeman was the editor of Granta until 2013. His books include How to Read a Novelist, Tales of Two Cities, Tales of Two Americas, and Maps, his debut collection of poems. He is executive editor at the Literary Hub and teaches at the New School and New York University. His work has appeared in the New Yorker and the Paris Review and has been translated into twenty languages.
Robin Coste Lewis is the poet laureate of Los Angeles. In 2015, her debut poetry collection, Voyage of the Sable Venus (Knopf) won the National Book Award in poetry––the first time a poetry debut by an African-American had ever won the prize in the National Book Foundation’s history, and the first time any debut had won the award since 1974. Lewis’s writing has appeared in various journals and anthologies, such as Time Magazine, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Paris Review, Transition, and Best American Poetry.
Tommy Orange is an American novelist and a writer from Oakland, California. His first book There There was one of the finalists for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize. Orange was also the recipient of 2019 American Book Awards. Orange is a citizen of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Nations of Oklahoma.
Matt Sumell is a graduate of University of California, Irvine’s MFA programme, and his fiction has since appeared in the Paris Review, Esquire,Electric Literature and elsewhere. He lives in Los Angeles, California.
About LITQUAKE:
San Francisco’s annual Litquake literary festival was founded by Bay Area writers as a week-long literary spectacle for book lovers, complete with cutting-edge panels, unique cross-media events, and hundreds of readings. Since its founding in 1999, the festival has presented close to 1400 author appearances for an audience of over 32,000 in its lively and inclusive celebration of San Francisco’s thriving contemporary literary scene. Litquake seeks to foster interest in literature, perpetuate a sense of literary community, and provide a vibrant forum for Bay Area writing as a complement to the city’s music, film, and cultural festivals.