This fall, American Short Fiction will host three virtual events featuring some of today’s most exciting and celebrated writers as they share eight books that helped them grow as writers, thinkers, and humans. As with previous events in this series, there will be an ASL interpreter at this event. This event is free, though you’ll need to register here.
For each “My Constellation of 8” event, we’ve partnered with an independent bookstore of the author’s choice to sell the recommended texts as well as books by the writers themselves. During these socially distant times, it seems particularly urgent to explore and discuss the ways in which we’re connected to one another, the ways in which we’ve been influenced and shaped by the art and artists we admire, and the ways in which we can support the independent bookstores that are, in so many cases, the beating hearts of their literary communities.
Our third installment on October 13th will feature award-winning author Carmen Maria Machado in conversation about eight of her literary influences with ASF‘s Coeditor Adeena Reitberger and will benefit Harriett’s Bookshop, an experiential bookstore named for historical heroine Harriet Tubman celebrating women authors, women artists, and women activists.
About Carmen Maria Machado
Carmen Maria Machado is the author of the bestselling memoir In the Dream House and the 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, Michener-Copernicus Foundation, Elizabeth George Foundation, CINTAS Foundation, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. She is the Abrams Artist-in-Residence at the University of Pennsylvania and lives in Philadelphia with her wife.
About Harriett’s Bookshop
Harriett’s Bookshop, named for the unapologetic abolitionist and freedom crusader General Harriet Tubman, is an experiential bookstore designed to amplify the voices of women authors, artists, and activists. Infused with the mission of Peace, Love, and Respect for Everyone, we aim to support those who want to learn, grow, and create worlds through imagination and community.
Sponsors
This project is supported in part by the Cultural Arts Division of the City of Austin Economic Development Department and the Texas Commission on the Arts.
