Hilton Als is the theater critic for The New Yorker, as well as an award-winning author and curator. Publishers Weekly called his memoir, The Women (1998), “a provocative, engrossing vision of both homosexuality and black culture.” In 1997, the New York Association of Black Journalists awarded Als first prize in both Magazine Critique/Review and Magazine Arts and Entertainment. He was awarded a Guggenheim for Creative Writing in 2000 and the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism for 2002–03. Mr. Als will read from his work in progress, White Girls.
Lisa Cohen is the author of the highly acclaimed biography All We Know: Three Lives (2012), described with “unqualified enthusiasm” by Hilton Als as a “remarkable, sui generis study” of three once well-known “modernist figures” (Esther Murphy, Mercedes de Acosta, and Madge Garland), their contributions to modernist culture, and their fear of “failure” and of “self-exposure” as lesbians. Ms. Cohen will read from All We Know, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Both authors will be joined by moderator Heather Love, Associate Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer History (2009).
This event is co-sponsored by Public Books and by Columbia University’s Heyman Center for the Humanities and Department of English and Comparative Literature.