What the Water Knows: A Reading

Join us on September 28th, 2023 from 6-8 pm for a special reading in connection with our current contemporary art exhibition, Reservoir: What the Water Knows.

To celebrate the elemental power of water to give rise to story, curator Arlinda Shtuni has invited three noted authors to join us and share their work. Nina MacLaughlin will read from Wake, Siren, a recasting of Ovid’s myths in which the stories of monstrous transfiguration are sung, finally, by those transformed. Christina Thompson will share from her book Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia, a story of miraculous navigation, and Tracy Winn will read House in the Field, River in the House, a short story based on a recent climate disaster.

The doors will open at 6 pm, to give the attendees a chance to see the exhibit. The reading will begin at 6:30 pm.

The event is free and open to all. A suggested donation of $10 is gratefully accepted. There is limited parking at the museum, and it will be available on a first come, first serve basis. Please help us monitor capacity by reserving your tickets in advance.

Nina MacLaughlin is the author of Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung (FSG); Summer Solstice: An Essay (Black Sparrow); and the acclaimed memoir Hammer Head: The Making of a Carpenter (W.W. Norton). She's worked as a journalist and a carpenter and her writing has appeared in or on the Paris Review Daily, n+1, the Virginia Quarterly Review, the Believer, the New York Times Book Review, Agni, and elsewhere. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Christina Thompson is the editor of Harvard Review and the author of Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia, which won the Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Award, the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, the NSW Premier’s General History Award, and was a finalist for prizes in the US, UK, and Australia. Her first book, Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All, was a finalist for the NSW Premier’s Literary Award and the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. The recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Library of Australia, she teaches at Harvard University Extension and lives outside Boston with her husband and three sons.

Tracy Winn wrote Mrs. Somebody Somebody, Random House 2010, winner of the Sherwood Anderson Foundation Award. With support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and MacDowell, she has recently completed River in the House, a story cycle about a catastrophic flood, based on her interviews with dairy farmers, housecleaners, heavy equipment operators, and local business people and on stories collected by the Vermont Folklore Center after Tropical Storm Irene decimated Vermont’s White River Valley. Her recent work has appeared in the Epiphany, Four Way Quarterly, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Harvard Review, Solstice Magazine, and Waxwing Magazine. She earned her degree from the Warren Wilson MFA Program for writers and splits her time between the Boston area and Central Vermont.

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