On November 3, 2022, we're resuming our sought-after Story Is the Thing reading series!
Our guests will be Tayi Tibble (Te Whānau ā Apanui/Ngāti Porou), a young indigenous poet from New Zealand, Jonathan Escoffery, whose debut collection of linked stories If I Survive You just landed on the National Book Award longlist, and John Freeman, the editor of Freeman's, a literary annual of new writing, and executive editor at Alfred A. Knopf.
Join us for a stimulating conversation about writing, Māori mythology, colonialism, sexuality, popular culture, Jamaican heritage, humor, racial identities, change, and above all, love.
About the Authors
Tayi Tibble (Te Whānau ā Apanui/Ngāti Porou)
TAYI TIBBLE (Te Whānau ā Apanui/Ngāti Porou) was born in 1995 and lives in Wellington, New Zealand. In 2017, she completed a master’s degree in creative writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters, Victoria University of Wellington, where she was the recipient of the Adam Foundation Prize in Creative Writing. Her second book of poetry, Rangikura, will be published in the United States in 2023.
Jonathan Escoffery
Jonathan Escoffery is the recipient of the 2020 Plimpton Prize for Fiction, a 2020 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, and the 2020 ASME Award for Fiction. His fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, American Short Fiction, Prairie Schooner, AGNI, Passages North, Zyzzyva, and Electric Literature, and has been anthologized in The Best American Magazine Writing. He received his MFA from the University of Minnesota, is a PhD fellow in the University of Southern California’s PhD. in Creative Writing and Literature Program, and in 2021 was awarded a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in the Creative Writing Program at Stanford University. If I Survive You is his debut book.
John Freeman
John Freeman founded the literary annual Freeman's, and is an executive editor at Alfred A. Knopf. His own work includes eleven books, including DICTIONARY OF THE UNDOING, TALES OF TWO PLANETS, and, co-edited with Tracy K. Smith, THERE'S A REVOLUTION OUTSIDE, MY LOVE. His writing has appeared in more than twenty languages. His latest book, WIND, TREES, a collection of poems, is out this fall with Copper Canyon.
All attendees ages 5+ must present a vaccination card, a photo of your card, or a digital vaccine record (e.g., myvaccinerecord.cdph.ca.gov) with matching photo ID. We also require a first booster for eligible attendees ages 12+. Masks are required for everyone over the age of 2 years old and must be worn at all times in the venue, and throughout the duration of the event, including the signing.