Bex Frankeberger: Antigone at the Rot Party w/ Molly McGhee
Featured Book
Antigone at the Rot Party
"Antigone at the Rot Party is a play-length adaptation of Sophocles's Antigone. The dramatic work renders the tragedy in contemporary language, blending traditional dialogue scenes with non-dialogue chorus sections and additional prose interludes. Informed by queer theory and postcolonial theory and featuring a personal Afterword by the author, the work reinvents Antigone for today's complex and harrowing world"--
This book will be available for purchase at the event.
About This Event
A mysterious invitation slides under the door. Antigone opens it, holds it to the light, tries to discern its color, wonders about its faint scent of decay. But there is no mistake: she has been invited to the Rot Party. The question is: who will join her?
Antigone at the Rot Party is a post-modern translation of a pre-modern classic, asking age-old questions with new fervor and wit. What do we owe the dead? Can we be brave enough to act in their memory? Can we be brave enough to love?
Bex Frankeberger’s debut—kind of a play, kind of a novel—filters Antigone through queer theory and contemporary philosophy, bringing us uncannily close to the perennial nature of power and hubris. Against both, it jolts us to recognize that principled defiance is still the most potent, and timeless, of antidotes.
You are cordially invited to join Antigone at the Rot Party.
Each ticket includes either a copy of the featured book or a $10 donation to PCRF.
Additional copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event.
A signing will follow the talk.
The conversation will be livestreamed for free online here.
As a reminder: If you are not feeling well, please do not come to the event, even if you have a ticket; email us and we'll work it out.
If you have any questions regarding these guidelines or to request accessibility accommodations, please contact eventhelp@booksaremagic.net.
Featured Author
Frankeberger, Bex
Xita Rubert is a Spanish novelist. In 2024, she won the Herralde Novel Prize, one of the most prestigious prizes for the novel in the Spanish language, for The Key Biscayne Affair. Her first novel, My Days with the Kopp Family, was translated into several languages. She is based in New York and holds a PhD in comparative literature from Princeton University.
In Conversation With
Leslie Jamison
Leslie Jamison is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Splinters, The Recovering, and The Empathy Exams; as well as the essay collection Make It Scream, Make It Burn, and the novel The Gin Closet. A contributing writer at The New Yorker, she teaches at Columbia University and lives with her family in Brooklyn.
About the Venue
Books are Magic · Brooklyn Heights
Welcome to the independent bookstore serving Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens and Brooklyn Heights! Books Are Magic is a family-owned independent bookstore with locations in Cobble Hill/Carroll Gardens and Brooklyn Heights in Brooklyn, committed to being a welcoming, friendly, and inclusive space for all people. We believe that books are indeed magic, and that literature is one of the best ways to create empathy, transportation, and transformation. We are enthusiastic about offering thoughtfully selected voices and stories on our shelves, and about hosting affordable events featuring emerging writers as well as long-adored authors. Books Are Magic is a place for children to feel comfortable, for young readers to grow into lifelong readers, and for our neighbors to be introduced to vibrant new books. Books Are Magic is owned by Emma Straub and Michael Fusco-Straub. You can read more about Emma Straub's books here.
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From the acclaimed author of Flâneuse and Art Monsters, a fierce, insistent, ecstatic investigation of the female voice, its power and vulnerabilities, and the ways women sing and speak their way through the world. For millennia, women’s raised voices have been called unruly, uncivilized, dangerous. Singing women were cast as sirens: mythical creatures who lured sailors to their death. A vocal break is where the voice shifts from lower to higher registers—from one thing to another. What can be made in this space of transition? Lauren Elkin draws on her own experiences as a young soprano in the 1990s as well as showcasing a full-throated, full range of other singers, including Édith Piaf, Maria Callas, Cyndi Lauper, Kathleen Hanna, Tori Amos, PJ Harvey, Beyoncé, FKA twigs, and Billie Eilish. Looking closely at the way power and identity shape our voices, she immerses readers in an eclectic soundscape, from musicals and pop music to folk, punk, and opera. As she seamlessly blends cultural history, criticism, memoir, and feminist manifesto, Elkin lays out how women have used their voices to defy convention, genre, capitalism, racism, sexism, and the forces that attempt to keep them quiet. What makes women’s singing so powerful—to the point at which others feel the need to control or manipulate it? Vocal Break is Elkin’s insistent, joyous call: Girls to the front, NOW! Event guidelines: Each ticket includes either a copy of the featured book or a $10 Books Are Magic gift card. Additional copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event. A signing will follow the talk. The conversation will be livestreamed for free online here . As a reminder: If you are not feeling well, please do not come to the event, even if you have a ticket; email us and we'll work it out. If you have any questions regarding these guidelines or to request accessibility accommodations, please contact eventhelp@booksaremagic.net.
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