An afternoon with Maxime Garcia Diaz: The network must be built

Please join us for an afternoon with poet Maxime Garcia Diaz, who will present her new collection The network must be built. There will be a talk and a Q&A, and afterwards Maxime will sign copies of her book.

About the book
What is a computer? Has the American century ended? Everything dies, dies, dies. The city, the internet, __ ______. The network must be built is a hybrid poetry collection, simultaneously published in English and Dutch, which mixes different forms and genres in order to narrate a disjointed history. This polymorphous collection roams like a misshapen travel log past Dutch data centers and silicon America, the Amsterdam of childhood and the college towns of the Midwest. The network must be built is a personal investigation into the dead screen, the slow cancellation of the city, the failure of language and representation, the mad scene and the squat, the servers and the social housing market, loss and resistance. This computer speaks English because its bones are American; this machine kills fascists because it wants to kill. Everything dies, except Neopets.

About the author
Maxime Garcia Diaz is a writer of poetry and prose in both English and Dutch.She received her MA in cultural analysis from the University of Amsterdam and her MFA in creative writing from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her first collection Het is warm in de hivemind (De Bezige Bij, 2021) was awarded the C. Buddingh’ Prize 2022 for Best First Collection in the Dutch language. The network must be built is her second collection and the first to be published in English as well as Dutch.