Lit Cleveland and Loganberry welcome you to another installment of the Plum City Readings series, this month featuring Kortney Morrow, author of the new poetry collection Run It Back, Loung Ung, award-winning author of First They Killed My Father, and Elizabeth Zaleski, author of The Trouble with Loving Poets and Other Essays on Failure.
Learn more and RSVP at litcleveland.org.
Preorder your SIGNED copy now! For in-store pickup or mailing.
Kortney Morrow's luminous debut collection, Run It Back, creates an iridescent dreamscape where early 2000s nostalgia is intricately woven into rigorous questioning around belonging, borders, fugitivity, and freedom. From a heroic crown sonnet stitching the colorways of an iconic basketball shoe with the economic development of a region to reimagining American Girl Dolls at a mandatory diversity training, Morrow's playfulness and humor uncover more than meets the eye. Using the principles of material culture studies and an evocative display of poetic forms, Morrow flips everyday pop culture on its head, revealing the hidden seams running through our lives. These dazzling poems quietly refute the myth of linear progress. In the search for freedom, Morrow explores how the desire to move forward can be a rallying cry to run it back. Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize judge, Carmen Gimé nez, calls Morrow " a cultural archaeologist," solidifying a stunning new voice in American arts and letters.
Preorder your SIGNED copy now! For in-store pickup or mailing.
Kortney Morrow's luminous debut collection, Run It Back, creates an iridescent dreamscape where early 2000s nostalgia is intricately woven into rigorous questioning around belonging, borders, fugitivity, and freedom. From a heroic crown sonnet stitching the colorways of an iconic basketball shoe with the economic development of a region to reimagining American Girl Dolls at a mandatory diversity training, Morrow's playfulness and humor uncover more than meets the eye. Using the principles of material culture studies and an evocative display of poetic forms, Morrow flips everyday pop culture on its head, revealing the hidden seams running through our lives. These dazzling poems quietly refute the myth of linear progress. In the search for freedom, Morrow explores how the desire to move forward can be a rallying cry to run it back. Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize judge, Carmen Gimé nez, calls Morrow " a cultural archaeologist," solidifying a stunning new voice in American arts and letters.
Preorder your SIGNED copy now! For in-store pickup or mailing.
Kortney Morrow's luminous debut collection, Run It Back, creates an iridescent dreamscape where early 2000s nostalgia is intricately woven into rigorous questioning around belonging, borders, fugitivity, and freedom. From a heroic crown sonnet stitching the colorways of an iconic basketball shoe with the economic development of a region to reimagining American Girl Dolls at a mandatory diversity training, Morrow's playfulness and humor uncover more than meets the eye. Using the principles of material culture studies and an evocative display of poetic forms, Morrow flips everyday pop culture on its head, revealing the hidden seams running through our lives. These dazzling poems quietly refute the myth of linear progress. In the search for freedom, Morrow explores how the desire to move forward can be a rallying cry to run it back. Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize judge, Carmen Gimé nez, calls Morrow " a cultural archaeologist," solidifying a stunning new voice in American arts and letters.
"A riveting memoir. . . an important, moving work that those who have suffered cannot afford to forget and those who have been spared cannot afford to ignore." -- San Francisco Chronicle
From a childhood survivor of the Cambodian genocide under the regime of Pol Pot, this is a riveting narrative of war crimes and desperate actions, the unnerving strength of a small girl and her family, and their triumph of spirit.
One of seven children of a high-ranking government official, Loung Ung lived a privileged life in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh until the age of five. Then, in April 1975, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army stormed into the city, forcing Ung's family to flee and, eventually, to disperse. Loung was trained as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans, her siblings were sent to labor camps, and those who survived the horrors would not be reunited until the Khmer Rouge was destroyed.
Harrowing yet hopeful, Loung's powerful story is an unforgettable account of a family shaken and shattered, yet miraculously sustained by courage and love in the face of unspeakable brutality.
"A riveting memoir. . . an important, moving work that those who have suffered cannot afford to forget and those who have been spared cannot afford to ignore." -- San Francisco Chronicle
From a childhood survivor of the Cambodian genocide under the regime of Pol Pot, this is a riveting narrative of war crimes and desperate actions, the unnerving strength of a small girl and her family, and their triumph of spirit.
One of seven children of a high-ranking government official, Loung Ung lived a privileged life in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh until the age of five. Then, in April 1975, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army stormed into the city, forcing Ung's family to flee and, eventually, to disperse. Loung was trained as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans, her siblings were sent to labor camps, and those who survived the horrors would not be reunited until the Khmer Rouge was destroyed.
Harrowing yet hopeful, Loung's powerful story is an unforgettable account of a family shaken and shattered, yet miraculously sustained by courage and love in the face of unspeakable brutality.
"A riveting memoir. . . an important, moving work that those who have suffered cannot afford to forget and those who have been spared cannot afford to ignore." -- San Francisco Chronicle
From a childhood survivor of the Cambodian genocide under the regime of Pol Pot, this is a riveting narrative of war crimes and desperate actions, the unnerving strength of a small girl and her family, and their triumph of spirit.
One of seven children of a high-ranking government official, Loung Ung lived a privileged life in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh until the age of five. Then, in April 1975, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army stormed into the city, forcing Ung's family to flee and, eventually, to disperse. Loung was trained as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans, her siblings were sent to labor camps, and those who survived the horrors would not be reunited until the Khmer Rouge was destroyed.
Harrowing yet hopeful, Loung's powerful story is an unforgettable account of a family shaken and shattered, yet miraculously sustained by courage and love in the face of unspeakable brutality.
Whether failing to restrain herself from trying to find greater meaning in roadkill, or to convince her dad that psychedelic mushrooms will not save his marriage, or to believably perform enthusiasm for her teammates, Elizabeth Zaleski is trying hard and failing spectacularly, and thankfully, she takes us along for the ride.
Funny, intimate, and candid, The Trouble with Loving Poets and Other Essays on Failure debuts an exciting new voice. From growing up in a quirky family in rural northeast Ohio and attending a Mennonite high school as a lapsed Catholic to struggling to get over a particularly well-endowed lover and suffering intestinal calamity while searching for closure, Zaleski's stories are at once captivating in their singularity and recognizable in their truthfulness. Fans of Tim Kreider and Sloane Crosley will appreciate Zaleski's levity and wit as she takes aim at such time-honored institutions as pet ownership and gives clear-eyed dispatches from the no man's land that is an HPV diagnosis.
As Zaleski writes, "If you'll bear with me, we're going to get a bit technical. And then, I promise, it will all start to matter."
Whether failing to restrain herself from trying to find greater meaning in roadkill, or to convince her dad that psychedelic mushrooms will not save his marriage, or to believably perform enthusiasm for her teammates, Elizabeth Zaleski is trying hard and failing spectacularly, and thankfully, she takes us along for the ride.
Funny, intimate, and candid, The Trouble with Loving Poets and Other Essays on Failure debuts an exciting new voice. From growing up in a quirky family in rural northeast Ohio and attending a Mennonite high school as a lapsed Catholic to struggling to get over a particularly well-endowed lover and suffering intestinal calamity while searching for closure, Zaleski's stories are at once captivating in their singularity and recognizable in their truthfulness. Fans of Tim Kreider and Sloane Crosley will appreciate Zaleski's levity and wit as she takes aim at such time-honored institutions as pet ownership and gives clear-eyed dispatches from the no man's land that is an HPV diagnosis.
As Zaleski writes, "If you'll bear with me, we're going to get a bit technical. And then, I promise, it will all start to matter."
Whether failing to restrain herself from trying to find greater meaning in roadkill, or to convince her dad that psychedelic mushrooms will not save his marriage, or to believably perform enthusiasm for her teammates, Elizabeth Zaleski is trying hard and failing spectacularly, and thankfully, she takes us along for the ride.
Funny, intimate, and candid, The Trouble with Loving Poets and Other Essays on Failure debuts an exciting new voice. From growing up in a quirky family in rural northeast Ohio and attending a Mennonite high school as a lapsed Catholic to struggling to get over a particularly well-endowed lover and suffering intestinal calamity while searching for closure, Zaleski's stories are at once captivating in their singularity and recognizable in their truthfulness. Fans of Tim Kreider and Sloane Crosley will appreciate Zaleski's levity and wit as she takes aim at such time-honored institutions as pet ownership and gives clear-eyed dispatches from the no man's land that is an HPV diagnosis.
As Zaleski writes, "If you'll bear with me, we're going to get a bit technical. And then, I promise, it will all start to matter."
