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Milkweed Presents ELLEN WAYLAND-SMITH, author of THE SCIENCE OF LAST THINGS, in Minneapolis to read from her collection, followed by a social hour with refreshments. She will be joined in conversation with author COLIN HAMILTON.In this luminous collection of essays, Ellen Wayland-Smith probes the raw edges of human existence, those periods of life in which our bodies remind us of our transience and the boundaries of the self dissolve.
From the Old Testament to Maggie Nelson, these explorations are grounded in a rich network of associations. In an essay on the postpartum body, Wayland-Smith interweaves her experience as a mother with accounts of phantom limbs and Greek mythology to meditate on moments when pieces of our being exist outside our bodies. In order to comprehend diagnoses of depression and breast cancer, she delves into LA hippie culture’s love affair with crystals and Emily Dickinson’s geological poetry. Her experience with chemotherapy leads to reflection on Western medicine and its intolerance of death and the healing capacity of nature. And throughout, she challenges the false separation between the human and the “primeval, animal mode of being.”
At once intimate and expansive, THE SCIENCE OF LAST THINGS peels back layers of human thought and behavior, breaking down our modern conceptions of individuality and reframing us as participants in a world of astounding elegance and mystery.
ELLEN WAYLAND-SMITH is the author of ONEIDA and THE ANGEL IN THE MARKETPLACE. Her work has appeared in Guernica, Catapult, The Millions, Longreads, The American Scholar, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She teaches at the University of Southern California and lives in Los Angeles.
COLIN HAMILTON has helped create a library, a center for dance, affordable housing projects for artists, and a park. He is the author of a poetry chapbook and a novel, THE THIRTEENTH MONTH. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he lives in St. Paul.
Milkweed Presents is a monthly event series featuring Milkweed authors as curators of conversation with local writers and community organizers on a topic of their choosing. These events are held in-person at Open Book in Milkweed Books and the Performance Hall.
Milkweed Editions is an independent publisher of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. We believe that literature has the potential to change the way we see the world. Learn more at milkweed.org
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
1011 Washington Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN, United States, Minnesota 55415
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