F200.

The “Weak” Novel: Radical New Fiction from Graywolf Press

Rooms 433-434, Summit Building, Seattle Convention Center, Level 4
Friday, March 10, 2023
1:45 pm to 3:00 pm

 

In Weak Planet, scholar Wai Chee Dimock questions mastery as an ideal in literature and proposes “beginning instead with vulnerability.” This panel convenes novelists who subvert hierarchies of plot and character, "incorrectly" borrow tropes from science fiction or academia, and blur the line between writing and life. What happens when a novel includes a (real) utility bill or a chapter written by a character? How can radically porous novels help us reimagine literature and society?



Outline & Supplemental Documents

Event Outline: The_Weak_Novel_Draft_Event_Outline.pdf

Participants

Moderator:

Yuka Igarashi is an executive editor at Graywolf Press. Before joining Graywolf in 2021, she was editor in chief of Soft Skull Press, founder and editor in chief of Catapult and the managing editor of Granta. She is coeditor of the annual Best Debut Short Stories anthology.

Isabel Waidner is the author of three novels: Sterling Karat Gold, We Are Made of Diamond Stuff, and Gaudy Bauble. Sterling Karat Gold won the Goldsmiths Prize, and was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction and the Republic of Consciousness Prize. They are based in London, UK.

Lucy Corin’s fourth book of fiction, The Swank Hotel, was published by Graywolf in 2021. She's been awarded the American Academy of Arts and Letters Rome Prize, an NEA fellowship, and teaches in the creative writing program at the University of California, Davis.

Mandy-Suzanne Wong is the author of Drafts of a Suicide Note (Regal House), a Foreword INDIES finalist; Listen, We All Bleed (New Rivers), an EcoLit Best Book of 2021; and Awabi, winner of the Digging Press Chapbook Award. Her novel The Box is forthcoming from Graywolf in 2023.

Lucy Ives is the author of two novels, Impossible Views of the World and Loudermilk: Or, The Real Poet; Or, The Origin of the World, both New York Times Book Review Editors' Choices. She writes frequently for Art in America, Artforum, and Frieze.

#AWP24

February 7–10, 2024
Kansas City, Missouri

Kansas City Convention Center