A Reading and Discussion with Lysley Tenorio and Jessica Hagedorn

Pushcart Prize-winning short story writer, Lysley Tenorio (Monstress) and Jessica Hagedorn, Professor of Creative Writing at Long Island University and author of Toxicology read from and discuss their latest works of fiction. 

Monstressintroduces a bold new writer who explores the clash and meld of disparate cultures and reveals the lives of people on the outside looking in with rare skill, humor, and deep understanding, in stories framed by tense, fascinating dichotomies--tenderness and power, the fantastical and the realistic, the familiar and the strange. Breathtakingly original, Monstress marks the arrival of a singular new voice in American fiction.

Jessica Hagedorn's edgy and entertaining new novel, Toxicology, centers on the lives of two women who are neighbors in Manhattan's West Village. Mimi Smith is a filmmaker of low-budget slasher movies in search of new material. Her neighbor Eleanor Delacroix is a legendary writer of erotic fiction, now nearing eighty and addicted to cocaine and gin. Their personal and artistic lives begin to collide in unexpected ways as Eleanor grieves over the recent death of her live-in lover, the renowned painter Yvonne Wilder.  

Toxicology is a dark yet playful exploration of money, desire, mortality, and the connection between creativity and self-destruction.  A discussion of both works will follow the readings.