READING | THURSDAY, OCTOBER 17 | 7 PM | FREE
UNM Creative Writing Program Presents Jenn Shapland
The UNM Creative Writing Program is bringing author Jenn Shapland to FUSION | 708 on Thursday, October 17 at 7 PM!
Jenn Shapland, a writer in New Mexico, will be reading from her recently published book, Thin Skin, a collection of essays.
ABOUT THIN SKIN (FROM COVER)
”For Jenn Shapland, the barrier between herself and the world is porous; she was even diagnosed with extreme dermatologic sensitivity—thin skin.
Recognizing how deeply vulnerable we all are to our surroundings, she becomes aware of the impacts our tiniest choices have on people, places, and species far away. She can't stop seeing the ways we are enmeshed and entangled with everyone else on the planet. Despite our attempts to cordon ourselves off from risk, our boundaries are permeable.
Weaving together historical research, interviews, and her everyday life in New Mexico, Shapland probes the lines between self and work, human and animal, need and desire. She traces the legacies of nuclear weapons development on Native land, unable to let go of her search for contamination until it bleeds out into her own family’s medical history. She questions the toxic myth of white womanhood and the fear of traveling alone that she’s been made to feel since girlhood. And she explores her desire to build a creative life as a queer woman, asking whether such a thing as a meaningful life is possible under capitalism.
Ceaselessly curious, uncompromisingly intelligent, and urgently seeking, with Thin Skin Shapland builds thrillingly on her genre-defying debut My Autobiography of Carson McCullers (“Gorgeous, symphonic, tender, and brilliant” —Carmen Machado), firmly establishing herself as one of the sharpest essayists of her generation.”
ABOUT JENN SHAPLAND (FROM JENN’S WEBSITE)
Jenn Shapland is a writer living in New Mexico. Her first book, My Autobiography of Carson McCullers, was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award and the Southern Book Prize, and won the 2021 Lambda Literary Award, the Publishing Triangle Judy Grahn Award, and the Phi Beta Kappa Christian Gauss Award. It was longlisted for the American Library Association Andrew Carnegie Medal of Excellence and the Reading the West Book Prize.
Her most recent book, Thin Skin, was a Time, Publishers Weekly, and New York Public Library best book of 2023. Alexander Chee, the author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, calls it “a wrenching, loving and trenchant examination of feminism, nuclear power, healthcare, queerness and American life unlike any I can think of, in essays that give lessons in pushing this form to the limit. The resulting collection is iconoclastic, electric, illuminating … A book to keep for a long time.” Terry Tempest Williams has called it “an important and visionary book.
Shapland's essays have appeared in New England Review, the New York Times, Guernica, and Tin House, and have been awarded a Pushcart Prize and the Rabkin Foundation Award. Her research and writing have been supported by residencies at Aspen Words, Yaddo, Ucross, and Vermont Studio Center and by fellowships from the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum and the Howard Foundation.
She has a PhD in English from the University of Texas at Austin and she works as an archivist for a visual artist.
ABOUT UNM CREATIVE WRITING PROGRAM (FROM UNM WEBSITE)
UNM’s English Department offers a full array of creative writing workshops in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction on the undergraduate and graduate levels.
Undergraduate students may register for introductory, intermediate, and advanced workshops in all three genres. Additionally, they are invited to attend readings sponsored by UNM’s Masters of Fine Arts Program and participate as readers on Blue Mesa Review. Qualifying undergraduates interested in pursuing creative writing on the graduate level are encouraged to work with a faculty mentor on a creative writing Honors Thesis. And every fall undergraduate creative writers compete for the prestigious Lena Todd Awards, a small cash stipend and the opportunity to share their work at the Works-in-Process Reading Series.
UNM’s MFA Program in Creative Writing is designed for graduate students committed to pursuing the writing life. This three-year degree combines studio-based workshops in fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction with craft seminars and coursework in literature, teaching pedagogy, and professional writing.
Quality bar service provided by Safe House Distilling Co. and Teller Genuine Vodka.
