What does it mean to be a writer within the publishing industry today, existing between creative impulse and capitalist pressures? For the first time, Alexander Chee and Isabel Waidner will be in conversation, in this far-reaching, reflective, and politically-present conversation.
Curated by Wasafiri, the world’s leading magazine of international contemporary writing, and supported by Queen Mary University of London’s Centre for Contemporary Writing, this event brings together two innovators at the cutting edge of contemporary literature. Waidner and Chee intervene in, while participating in, the publishing industry; much of their work operates at a meta level – through writing about writing – and both hold prominent roles at universities alongside their writing work. These two internationally-renowned authors from opposite sides of the Atlantic will be in conversation for the first time about their most recent works – How to Write an Autobiographical Novel (Chee) and Corey Fah Does Social Mobility (Waidner) – and detangling the knottiness of art and the politics of publishing, and (making a) living as a writer in the fraught landscape of mainstream publishing.
When: Monday 30 October, doors open 6.30pm
Where: Common Press Bookshop, 118 Bethnal Grn Rd, London E2 6DG
Tickets: Pay-what-you-can*
About the authors:
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. He is a winner of a 2021 United States Artists fellowship and a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award and a NEA Fellowship in Prose. A contributing editor at the New Republic and an editor at large at VQR, he teaches as a Professor of Creative Writing at Dartmouth College.
Isabel Waidner is a novelist based in London. They are the author of Corey Fah Does Social Mobility, Sterling Karat Gold, We Are Made of Diamond Stuff and Gaudy Bauble. They are the winner of the Goldsmiths Prize 2021 and were shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize in 2019, the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction in 2022 and the Republic of Consciousness Prize in 2018, 2020 and 2022. They are a co-founder of the event series Queers Read This at the Institute of Contemporary Arts and they are an academic in the School of English and Drama at Queen Mary University of London.
Wasafiri remains wedded to the unbounded vision of writing across worlds with which it began in 1984. Having pioneered a shift in the literary, cultural, and critical landscape, the magazine draws widely across modern culture and the arts, publishing a lively and informed mix of fiction, poetry, interviews, essays, and reviews. In today’s increasingly divided world, the magazine’s original mission to provoke cross-cultural dialogue and provide a space for the publication of distinctive new work from across the globe is ever more vital. Continuing to introduce readers to the best in international writing and committed to promoting the freshest talents, it opens spaces for reading and writing across borders, imagining diverse possibilities for belonging.
You can subscribe to the magazine here or purchase their latest print issue here.
*There are a limited number of free tickets available for this event - if these have sold out and you cannot afford the minimum pay-what-you-can ticket type, please email us at books@commonpress.co.uk and we will add you to the guest list, no questions asked.