Please note that this event has already occurred, but the good news is that you can watch a recording of the event on Crowdcast here, in its entirety.
Watch a Recording of the Event Here
This fall, American Short Fiction will host three virtual events featuring some of today’s most exciting and celebrated writers. Unlike other virtual events, which importantly seek to promote and share a writer’s own work, we’re inviting Roger Reeves on August 25th, Esmé Weijun Wang on September 15th, and Carmen Maria Machado on October 13th to discuss and share eight books that shaped their thinking, changed them, and helped them grow as writers, as thinkers, and as people. There will be an ASL interpreter provided at each virtual event.
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 first installment will feature award-winning poet Roger Reeves on August 25th in conversation about eight of his literary influences with ASF‘s Coeditor Adeena Reitberger and will benefit Black Pearl Books, an Austin-based indie bookstore promoting diversity, inclusion, equality, community, and cultural awareness through literature.
About Roger Reeves
Roger Reeves earned his PhD and MFA from the University of Texas, Austin, and is the author of King Me (Copper Canyon Press, 2013), winner of the Larry Levis Reading Prize, the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award, and a John C. Zacharis First Book Award. He is the recipient of a Whiting Award and two Pushcart Prizes, as well as fellowships from Cave Canem, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Poetry Foundation, and Princeton University. An associate professor of poetry in the English Department at the University of Texas, Austin, his second collection of poetry is forthcoming from W. W. Norton.
About Black Pearl Books
Black Pearl Books is an Austin-based indie bookstore promoting diversity, inclusion, equality, community, and cultural awareness through literature.