EVENT DETAILS

October 26: "Writing Sex: A Conversation about Writing" with Jonathan Alexander

The UC Irvine Center for Storytelling, The Literary Journalism Program & The Department of English

present

"Writing Sex: A Conversation about Writing"

Tuesday, October 26

5 PM Pacific

Zoom Webinar

Free and open to the public; all welcome!

Register here:  http://bit.ly/UCIWritingSex

For questions or to request accommodations, contact piersonp@uci.edu.

About Writing Sex:

During the early days of the pandemic, Jonathan Alexander started hosting a series of video interviews with some of the most interesting, creative, and provocative contemporary writers who are writing about sex, sexuality, and intimacy.  The series, WRITING SEX, was hosted by the LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS, and it featured interviews that were sometimes ribald but always smart, focusing on how writers push the limits of our ability to imagine what sex is, what it means, and what it could be.

This virtual conversation, Writing Sex: A Conversation about Writing, features three such writers, two of whom were part of the original LARB series.  Join Professor Alexander as he moderates a conversation with Alex Espinoza (UCI MFA), Andrea Lawlor, and Michael Lowenthal about the delights, complexities, challenges, and possibilities of writing today about sex and sexuality. 

Panelists:

Alex Espinoza is the author of Still Water Saints, The Five Acts of Diego León, and Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime. He’s written for the LA Times, the NY Times Magazine, VQR, LitHub, and NPR's All Things Considered. The recipient of fellowships from the NEA and MacDowell as well as an American Book Award, he lives in Los Angeles and is the Tomás Rivera Endowed Chair of Creative Writing at UC-Riverside.

Andrea Lawlor teaches writing at Mount Holyoke College, is the recipient of a 2020 Whiting Award for Fiction, and has been awarded fellowships by Lambda Literary and Radar Labs. Their publications include a chapbook, Position Papers (Factory Hollow Press, 2016), and a novel, Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl, a 2018 finalist for the Lambda Literary and CLMP Firecracker Awards. Paul, originally published by Rescue Press in 2017, is out now from Vintage/Knopf.

Michael Lowenthal has published four novels—The Same Embrace, Avoidance, Charity Girl, and The Paternity Test—and a story collection, Sex with Strangers. His shorter work has appeared in Tin House, Ploughshares, the New York Times Magazine, Guernica, and The Southern Review. The recipient of fellowships from the Bread Loaf writers’ conference, the MacDowell Colony, and the Mass Cultural Council, he lives in Boston and teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Lesley University.