“The past, with its monstrous depth and span, reached toward him, demanding an understanding that he simply could not give it.”
KAREN RUSSELL, ORANGE WORLD
Karen Russell is a Pulitzer Prize Finalist and author of the New York Times bestsellers Swamplandia!, Vampires in the Lemon Grove, and now Orange World — a stunning collection that showcases her extraordinary gifts of language and imagination.
Russell’s comedic genius and mesmerizing talent for creating outlandish predicaments that uncannily mirror our inner lives is on full display. The landscape in which these stories unfold is a feral, slippery, purgatorial space, bracketed by the void — yet within it Russell captures the exquisite beauty and tenderness of ordinary life. Orange World is a miracle of storytelling from a true modern master.
Russell’s debut novel, Swamplandia!, was chosen by the New York Times as one of the Ten Best Books of 2011, longlisted for the Orange Prize, and a Pulitzer Prize Finalist. In 2009, she received the 5 Under 35 award from the National Book Foundation. In 2013, she was named a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant,” the youngest of the year’s 24 winners.
More about Karen Russell
The New Yorker, April 2020
How the Coronavirus Has Infected Our Vocabulary
Electric Literature, June 2019
Karen Russell’s Oddly Hopeful Stories of Ghosts, Dead Bodies, Devils, and Disasters
Granta, November 2011
Interview with Karen Russell
Karen Russell’s Website
“Russell creates fully realized worlds. Her writing is particular and alive. Her imagination spills over the sink and hits the backsplash.”
DWIGHT GARNER, THE NEW YORK TIMES
Sponsored by Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh
With additional support from Chatham University
WHEN
Monday, February 22, 2021
Virtual Event, watch anytime online for one week
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$15
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