Come out to celebrate Blue Stoop's first season of programming, as well as enjoy readings, drinks, and friends.
7:00: Doors, drinks, chat
7:30: Alexander Chee will read, then be in conversation with Robin Black.
Alexander Chee is the author of the novels Edinburgh, The Queen of the Night, and the essay collection How To Write An Autobiographical Novel, which the New York Times Book Review called "a rough coming-of-age chronology, from the author’s sexual awakening as an exchange student in Mexico (“a summer of wanting impossible things”) to the death of his father at 43, following a car accident, when Chee was 15; his beginnings as a writer at Wesleyan University, where he studied under Annie Dillard; his tenure in San Francisco at the height of the AIDS crisis; the publication of his (explicitly autobiographical) first novel, “Edinburgh,” in 2001; and his maturity as a reader, writer and instructor who longs, in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election, to lead his students “to another world, one where people value writing and art more than war.”
Chee is a contributing editor at The New Republic, and an editor at large at VQR. His essays and stories have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, T Magazine, Tin House, Slate, Guernica, and Out, among others and he is winner of a 2003 Whiting Award, a 2004 NEA Fellowship in prose and a 2010 MCCA Fellowship, and residency fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the VCCA, Civitella Ranieri and Amtrak. He is an associate professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College.
Robin Black’s story collection, If I loved you, I would tell you this, was a finalist for the Frank O’Connor International Story Prize, and named a Best Book of 2010 by numerous publications, including the Irish Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. Her novel, Life Drawing, one of NPR's Best Books of 2014, was longlisted for the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize, the Impac Dublin Literature Prize, and the Folio Prize. A recipient of fellowships from MacDowell Colony and The Leeway Foundation, Robin is a Contributing Editor to Colorado Review. Her fiction, essays and reviews have appeared in numerous publications including One Story, The New York Times Book Review, The Chicago Tribune, Southern Review, The Rumpus, O. Magazine, Conde Nast Traveler UK, and many anthologies, including The Best Creative Nonfiction. Her most recent book is Crash Course: Essays From Where Writing and Life Collide. She lives with her husband in Philadelphia and teaches in the Rutgers-Camden MFA Program.
This program is free and open to the public and will take place at Asian Arts Initiative, 1219 Vine Street. It is made possible through the generous support of the Asian Arts Initiative and the 215 Festival. There will be beer, wine, and cocktails for sale, as well as Blue Stoop tote bags, featuring donated books, journals, and wares from many of Philadelphia's most esteemed small presses, literary journals, and indie bookstores.
If you'd like to pre-pay for your tote in advance, you can donate at the $20 level or above here.
