Local Author Circle featuring Nicole Graev Lipson
Join us in a lively conversation with author Nicole Lipson about her book, 'Mothers and Other Fictional Characters.'
About Mothers & Other Fictional Characters:
What does it take to escape the plotlines mapped onto us? Searching for clues in the work of her literary foremothers, Lipson untangles what it means to be a girl, a woman, a lover, a partner, a daughter, and a mother in a world all too ready to reduce us to stock characters. Whether she’s testing the fragile borders of fidelity, embracing the taboo power of female friendship, escaping her family for the solitude of the mountains, grappling with what to do with her frozen embryos, or letting go of the children she imagined for the ones she’s raising, Lipson pushes beyond the easy, surface stories we tell about ourselves to brave less certain territory.
As Lipson journeys through this thorny terrain, literature becomes her lodestar. Kate Chopin’s erotic story “The Storm” helps her reckon with the longings stirring below the surface of her marriage. Watching her son absorb the stifling codes of manhood, she finds unlikely parenting inspiration in Philip Roth’s most cartoonish overbearing mother. Summoning Gwendolyn Brooks, she asks, Can destroying one’s frozen embryos be understood as a maternal act? And accompanied by Shakespeare’s gender-bending heroine Rosalind, she seizes on the truest meaning of loving her oldest child.
Risky and revealing, nourishing and affirming, rigorous and sexy, Mothers and Other Fictional Characters is a shimmering love letter to our forgotten selves—and the ones we’re still becoming.
About Nicole Graev Lipson:
Nicole Graev Lipson's writing has appeared in The Sun, Virginia Quarterly Review, the Gettysburg Review, The Millions, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, and Marie Claire, among other venues. Her work has been awarded a Pushcart Prize, nominated for a National Magazine Award, and selected for The Best American Essays. Originally from New York City, she lives outside of Boston with her family.
Join us in a lively conversation with author Nicole Lipson about her book, 'Mothers and Other Fictional Characters.'
About Mothers & Other Fictional Characters:
What does it take to escape the plotlines mapped onto us? Searching for clues in the work of her literary foremothers, Lipson untangles what it means to be a girl, a woman, a lover, a partner, a daughter, and a mother in a world all too ready to reduce us to stock characters. Whether she’s testing the fragile borders of fidelity, embracing the taboo power of female friendship, escaping her family for the solitude of the mountains, grappling with what to do with her frozen embryos, or letting go of the children she imagined for the ones she’s raising, Lipson pushes beyond the easy, surface stories we tell about ourselves to brave less certain territory.
As Lipson journeys through this thorny terrain, literature becomes her lodestar. Kate Chopin’s erotic story “The Storm” helps her reckon with the longings stirring below the surface of her marriage. Watching her son absorb the stifling codes of manhood, she finds unlikely parenting inspiration in Philip Roth’s most cartoonish overbearing mother. Summoning Gwendolyn Brooks, she asks, Can destroying one’s frozen embryos be understood as a maternal act? And accompanied by Shakespeare’s gender-bending heroine Rosalind, she seizes on the truest meaning of loving her oldest child.
Risky and revealing, nourishing and affirming, rigorous and sexy, Mothers and Other Fictional Characters is a shimmering love letter to our forgotten selves—and the ones we’re still becoming.
About Nicole Graev Lipson:
Nicole Graev Lipson's writing has appeared in The Sun, Virginia Quarterly Review, the Gettysburg Review, The Millions, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, and Marie Claire, among other venues. Her work has been awarded a Pushcart Prize, nominated for a National Magazine Award, and selected for The Best American Essays. Originally from New York City, she lives outside of Boston with her family.
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Highlights
- 1 hour 30 minutes
- In person
Refund Policy
Location
Hummingbird Books
55 Boylston Street
#Suite 5510 Newton, MA 02467
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