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Join us as Min Jin Lee, Alexander Chee, and Deborah Treisman gather to talk about and read from Denis Johnson final, posthumously published collection, The Largesse of the Sea Maiden, featuring some of "the best fiction published by any American writer during this short century".
The Largesse of the Sea Maiden enters a new frontier in his work, utilizing his luminous prose to contemplate the ghosts of time and the complex interactions amongst the mysteries of the universe.
Min Jin Lee's Pachinko (Feb 2017) was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction, a New York Times 10 Best Books of 2017, a USA Today Top 10 Books of 2017, and an American Booksellers Association's Indie Next Great Reads. Her debut novel, Free Food for Millionaires, was one of the "Top 10 Novels of the Year" for The Times (London), NPR's Fresh Air, and USA Today. Her short fiction has been featured on NPR's Selected Shorts. Her writings have appeared in Condé Nast Traveler, The Times (London), Vogue, Travel+Leisure, Wall Street Journal, New York Times Magazine, and Food & Wine. Her essays and literary criticism have been anthologized widely. She served as a columnist for the Chosun Ilbo, the leading paper of South Korea. She lives in New York with her family.
Alexander Chee is the author of the novels Edinburgh and The Queen of the Night, and the essay collection How To Write An Autobiographical Novel, forthcoming from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in April of 2018. He 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. 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.
Deborah Treisman has been the fiction editor of the New Yorker since 2003, and was deputy fiction editor for six years before that. She hosts the award-winning New Yorker Fiction Podcast, and was the editor of the anthology 20 Under 40: Stories from The New Yorker. The voice that gave rise to a watershed moment belongs to Rose McGowan. Best known for her Hollywood and television roles (Planet Terror, Scream, Jawbreaker, Charmed), she battled a sexist and abusive industry bent on hijacking her image, propelling her to become an activist and agent of change. It was McGowan’s explosive reports in The New Yorker and The New York Times that opened the floodgates that have brought sexual assault and harassment out of the shadows. Joined by journalist Ronan Farrow, who wrote The New Yorker story, McGowan talks about the experiences captured in her new book, BRAVE. Equal parts memoir and manifesto, the work is as fierce, raw and unapologetic as its creator. 
Political philosopher Jeremy Waldron explored how economic and cultural interests can determine immigration policy. The presentation served as the 2017 Frederic R. and Molly S. Kellogg Biennial Lecture on Jurisprudence.
Speaker Biography: Jeremy Waldron is a law professor at New York University, where he teaches in the areas of constitutional theory, legal philosophy and political theory. He was previously the Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at All Souls College, Oxford. Waldron was born in New Zealand and educated in law and philosophy at the University of Otago and University of Oxford. He has held academic appointments at the University of Edinburgh (1983-1987), University of California, Berkeley (1987-1996), Princeton University (1995-1996) and Columbia University (1996-2006). A prolific scholar, he has written and published many articles and books on the subject of jurisprudence and political theory. His books include "The Dignity of Legislation," "Law and Disagreement," "Torture, Terror and Trade-offs: Philosophy for the White House," "Dignity, Rank, and Rights," "Political Theory" and "One Another's Equals: The Basis of Human Equality." Carmen Maria Machado is a fiction writer, critic, and essayist whose work has appeared in the New Yorker, Granta, Tin House, Guernica, Gulf Coast, NPR, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the Michener-Copernicus Foundation, the Elizabeth George Foundation, the CINTAS Foundation, the Speculative Literature Foundation, the Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Workshop, the University of Iowa, the Yaddo Corporation, Hedgebrook, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. She is the Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, and lives in Philadelphia with her wife.
In this talk, Machado reads the short story "Inventory" in full from her first published book, "Her Body and Other Parties." In "Inventory," a woman details the sexual encounters of her life against the backdrop of a deadly and highly contagious virus spreading throughout the world. The virus is blooming on the horizon; come listen.