A Reading and Craft Talk with Maggie Nelson

Please join BMI and the UNLV Creative Writing Programs for a reading and conversation with acclaimed writer Maggie Nelson.

Maggie will read from her most recent publication, Pathemata, Or, The Story of My Mouth, and new work on Friday, November 19 at 7:00 pm in HOS 382 https://www.unlv.edu/maps/campus/HOS). The Guardian writes of Pathemata: “In this thoughtful work, [Nelson] excavates the duties of parenthood and care, bodies and aging, loneliness and mortality…The narrative jumps in time, and the lines between reality, dreams and fiction blur.”

On Saturday, November 20 at 10:00 am in HOS 434 https://www.unlv.edu/maps/campus/HOS, Nelson joins in conversation with poet and UNLV professor Claudia Keelan, exploring how Nelson approaches the creation of her lyric prose and genre-bending memoirs, such as Bluets, recognized as A Guardian Book of the Year, and the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning The Argonauts.

We are grateful for a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts that helped to fund Maggie Nelson’s appearance at UNLV.

Maggie Nelson has written twelve books of poetry and prose, many of which have become cult classics that defy categorization. Her newest book is Pathemata, or The Story of My Mouth. Her early book Bluets was published by Wave Books in 2009 and subsequently named by Book Forum as “one of the top 10 best books published in the past 20 years.” In 2024, the book was adapted into an acclaimed play staged at the Royal Court Theatre of London. Her other nonfiction includes On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint (2021), named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; and The Argonauts (2015), a National Book Critics Circle Award winner and named by The New York Times as one of the top 100 books of the 21st Century. Her poetry titles include Something Bright, Then Holes (2007), and Jane: A Murder (2005).

A 2016 MacArthur “genius” fellow, she currently teaches at the University of Southern California and lives in Los Angeles.