F167. Written on a Woman's Body: A Cross-Genre Reading of Bold Writings about Women and Their Bodies

Room 208AB, Washington Convention Center, Level Two
Friday, February 10, 2017
10:30 am to 11:45 am

 

Birth, breast cancer, Botox, body art, and what goes on behind bedroom doors: women's bodies and all they experience are being written about more frankly than ever before. DC is a fitting place for bold, politically charged readings. Writing in fiction, nonfiction, scripts, and poetry, the female authors in this reading and Q&A offer samples of their most visceral works. Then, in the same bold spirit, they discuss the unique challenges and rewards of writing about the female body, head on.


Participants

Moderator:

Elizabeth Searle is the author of We Got Him, a movel, and four prior books: My Body to YouA Four-Sided Bed, Celebrities in Disgrace, Girl Held in Home. Her theater work Tonya & Nancy: the Rock Opera drew national media and has run in NYC, Boston, and in Chicago. She teaches at Stonecoast MFA.

Dolen Perkins-Valdez is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel Wench. Her second novel is Balm. Her stories have appeared in the Kenyon Review and elsewhere. She teaches in the American University MFA program.

Melissa Pritchard is the author of ten books. Her awards include the Flannery O'Connor Award, Carl Sandburg, J.H. Kafka, the Pushcart Prize, the O. Henry Prize, an NEA grant, a B&N Discover Award, starred reviews from Library Journal and Publishers Weekly, and Best LGBT book from ALA. She is a 2016 Carson McCullers Fellow.

Shara McCallum is the author of five books of poetry, including her most recent collection, Madwoman. Recognition for her work includes an NEA Fellowship in poetry and Witter Bynner Fellowship. McCallum teaches and directs the Stadler Center for Poetry at Bucknell University.

Lee Hope is author of the novel Horsefever; editor in chief of Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices; has received fellowships from the Maine Arts Commission and the Pennsylvania Arts Council; has published fiction in the North American Review, Witness, Epiphany, and others; and directed writing programs.

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February 7–10, 2024
Kansas City, Missouri

Kansas City Convention Center