March 25 @ 12:30 pm – 1:45 pm
Never Quite Like This: Hedgebrook introducing Carmen Maria Machado in Conversation with Nicole Shawan Junior
Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall
Auditorium
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Guggenheim Fellow and critically-acclaimed author of the bestselling memoir In the Dream House, and the graphic novel The Low, Low Woods, Carmen Maria Machado joins CityLit in a new partnership with Hedgebrook, a premier women’s residency on Whidbey Island, Washington with alumnae who include CityLit Project’s Executive Director. A finalist for the National Book Award and the winner of the Bard Fiction Prize, the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, and numerous others, Machado has been listed by the New York Times as a member of ‘The New Vanguard” and Machado’s award-winning short story collection Her Body and Other Parties as one of “15 remarkable books by women that are shaping the way we read and write fiction in the 21st century.” Carmen will read The Tour, a short story published in McSweeney’s, and will be in conversation with Nicole Shawan Junior, the founder of SeaSalted Honey and Roots. Wounds. Words. (Two distinct literary arts revolutions that serve BIPOC writers.) Nicole is the Deputy Director of Prison and Justice Writing at PEN America and curated Raising Mothers’ limited Justice Involved Mothers column, penned by formerly incarcerated Black women.
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CARMEN MARIE MACHADO
Carmen Maria Machado is the author of the bestselling memoir In the Dream House, the graphic novel The Low, Low Woods, and the award-winning short story collection Her Body and Other Parties. She has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the winner of the Bard Fiction Prize, the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction, the Brooklyn Public Library Literature Prize, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize. In 2018, the New York Times listed Her Body and Other Parties as a member of “The New Vanguard,” one of “15 remarkable books by women that are shaping the way we read and write fiction in the 21st century.” Her essays, fiction, and criticism have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Granta, Vogue, This American Life, Harper’s Bazaar, Tin House, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, The Believer, Guernica, Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, Best American Nonrequired Reading, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the Guggenheim Foundation, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. She is the former Abrams Artist-in-Residence at the University of Pennsylvania and lives in Brooklyn.
carmenmariamachado.com
Instagram: @carmenmmachado
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NICOLE SHAWAN JUNIOR
Nicole Shawan Junior (they/them) was bred in the bass-heavy beat and scratch of Brooklyn, where the cool of inner-city life barely survived crack cocaine’s burn. Their work appears in Oprah Daily, Guernica, Zora, Gay Mag, The Feminist Wire, and elsewhere. Nicole has received residencies and fellowships from Hedgebrook, Tin House, Periplus, NYFA, Lambda Literary, the San Francisco Public Library’s James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center, and more. Nicole is Deputy Director of Prison and Justice Writing at PEN America, founder of SeaSalted Honey and Roots. Wounds. Words. (two distinct literary arts revolutions that serve BIPOC writers), and former editor-in-chief of Black Femme Collective. They have guest edited for The Rumpus as well as served on the editorial teams at Women’s Studies Quarterly of The Feminist Press, SLICE Magazine, and more. Nicole curated Raising Mothers’ limited Justice Involved Mothers column, which was penned by formerly incarcerated Black women.
nicoleshawanjunior.com
Twitter: @nicoleshawanjunior
Instagram: @NicoleShawan
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HEDGEBROOK
Hedgebrook is a global community of women writers and people who seek extraordinary books, poetry, plays, films and music by women. A literary nonprofit, our mission is to support visionary women-identified writers whose stories and ideas shape our culture now and for generations to come. We offer writing residencies and Radical Craft Retreats on Whidbey Island, and public programs that connect writers with readers and audiences around the world.
hedgebrook.org
Twitter: @writehedgebrook
Instagram: @hedgebrook
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CityLit Project and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in partnership with Hedgebrook and Chesapeake Shakespeare Company present CityLit Festival: Lifting As We Climb. This celebration of the arts showcases a bevy of leading poets and writers on March 25, 2023. We’re talking fiction, nonfiction, poetry galore, and ways to up the ante on your craft.
Download the CityLit Festival: Lifting As We Climb flyer.