Talks
Revisiting The White Album
- 11AM
Brooklyn Book Festival
209 Joralemon Street, Brooklyn
In conjunction with The White Album
With Morgan Jerkins and Alexander Chee
In conversation with Meghan O’Rourke
Presented at the Brooklyn Book Festival
Writers Morgan Jerkins, Alexander Chee, and Meghan O’Rourke convene for a rich discussion of Joan Didion’s 1979 essay collection The White Album, nearly 40 years after its publication. In conjunction with Lars Jan / Early Morning Opera’s theatrical adaptation as part of the 2018 Next Wave Festival, Jerkins, Chee, and O’Rourke dissect this seminal work—a masterpiece in which memoir, political examination, and cultural criticism intersect—and the way in which the essay is viewed and engaged with as a form today.
Lars Jan’s multi-layered vision of Joan Didion’s essay juxtaposes the author’s searing text, performed in its entirety, with a glassed-in microcosm of social unraveling.
Alexander Chee is a novelist and essayist. His most recent essay collection is How to Write an Autobiographical Novel. He is an associate professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College.
Morgan Jerkins is the author of the New York Times bestseller This Will Be My Undoing. Her work has been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, and ELLE, among many others. She is based in Harlem.
Meghan O’Rourke is a poet and nonfiction writer. She is the author of the poetry collections Sun In Days, Once, and Halflife, as well as The Long Goodbye, her bestselling memoir about the death of her mother. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and writes for The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic, and others. She teaches in the MFA program at NYU.