Doty & Bornstein's Emory Events

Keynote speakers Mark Doty and Kate Bornstein will give talks on the Emory University campus as part of the AQLF. Both will be open to the public. Here are the details.

Mark Doty: The Challenges of Writing Your Own History
October 16, Noon-1:30 p.m. Dobbs University Center, Room 251

A talk/discussion about some of the hurdles (and opportunities) every writer of memoir faces: How to structure the book and handle time? How to create a vivid, compelling narrative? What to put in and what to leave out? How to handle explosive or difficult material? And what about your family? And what about your history as part of a movement's history? Bring your questions.

Mark Doty is the author of eight books of poems, among them Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems, School of the Arts, Source, and My Alexandria. He has also published four volumes of nonfiction prose: Still Life with Oysters and Lemon, Heaven's Coast, Firebird and Dog Years, which was a New York Times bestseller in 2007. Doty's poems have appeared in many magazines including The Atlantic Monthly, The London Review of Books, Ploughshares, Poetry, and The New Yorker. Widely anthologized, his poems appear in The Norton Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry and many other collections. Doty has received the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, a Whiting Writers Award, two Lambda Literary Awards and the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction. He is the only American poet to have received the T.S. Eliot Prize in the U.K., and has received fellowships from the Guggenheim, Ingram Merrill and Lila Wallace/Readers Digest Foundations, and from the National Endowment for the Arts.

This program is sponsored by the Atlanta Queer Literary Festival and Emory University's  Department of Women's Studies, Office of LGBT Life and Studies in Sexuality


Kate Bornstein: Hello, Cruel World: Strategies for a better life, even when other people make you feel like an outsider
October 17, 11:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m. 111 White Hall

Sometimes, whatever it is that gives you the most joy, pleasure or relief also gets you into the deepest trouble, especially when you try to explain it to other people. It could be doing something harmless that you're not allowed to do, or falling in love with someone that someone else doesn't want you to love. It could your weight that makes you and outsider, or your height, the color of your skin, your religion, or the clothes you wear. As harmless as you feel you're being, people may still exclude you from their lives--sometimes cruelly. This is a 90 minute workshop that offers alternatives to suffering as an outsider. The workshop is based on Kate's book, Hello, Cruel World. More information at www.hellocruelworld.net.

Bornstein is an author, playwright and performance artist. Her latest book, Hello, Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks, and Other Outlaws, hits the bookshelves in July, 2006. Kate's published works include the books Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us; My Gender Workbook; and the cyber-romance-action novel, Nearly Roadkill with co-author Caitlin Sullivan. Kate's plays and performance pieces include Strangers in Paradox, Hidden: A Gender, The Opposite Sex Is Neither, Virtually Yours, and y2kate: gender virus 2000. Kate has two new projects ready to launch in the spring of 2007: a memoir and new solo performance piece, both with the same title: Kate Bornstein Is A Queer And Pleasant Danger.

This program is sponsored by the Atlanta Queer Literary Festival and Emory University's  Center for Women, Department of Women's Studies, Office of LGBT Life and Studies in Sexuality Program.