Josephine Houman

2 months ago | publicseminar.org | Marisol Delarosa |Mary Karmelek |Alexander Sorondo |Josephine Houman

Hollywood Inn sign, Motel Drive, Fresno, California (1987) | John Margolies / Library of Congress / No known restrictionsI was prepared to laugh my way through Danzy Senna’s sixth novel, Colored Television (Riverhead, 2024), after reading review after review touting the book as a comedy.

Dec 11, 2024 | publicseminar.org | Marisol Delarosa |Luis Jaramillo |Josephine Houman |Albert Nguyen

A covenstead? (2007) | neiljmh / CC BY-ND 2.0In his debut novel, The Witches of El Paso (Primero Sueño Press and Atria Books, 2024),Luis Jaramillo provides readers a sweeping multi-generational story about Nena, a woman living in World War II–era El Paso who begs for a new life and finds herself transported to colonial Mexico, where she learns to cultivate her magical powers with an aquelarre (coven) of nuns.

Dec 5, 2024 | publicseminar.org | Alex Rossen |Gregory Laski |Josephine Houman |Miranda Young

Joint Landscape (15-9-1546) | Shen Zhou / Public DomainIf you or someone you know is experiencing symptoms of a negative outlook on humanity, then David E. Cooper’s Pessimism, Quietism, and Nature as Refuge (Agenda Publishing, 2024) might be just the book for you. Cooper’s “negative judgement on the moral and spiritual failings of humankind” focuses readers’ attention on our species’ fundamental and inalienable propensity for envy, anger, egoism, insatiable greed, and deceit.

Oct 17, 2024 | publicseminar.org | Emma Minor |Josephine Houman |Alexander Sorondo |Mat Cusick

“Allegory of Sight“ (1659) | Jan van Kessel / CC0 1.0Like William Blake, Becca Rothfeld believes that “the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.”  A widely praised young critic (winner of the National Book Critics Circle Nona Balakian Prize for Criticism and the Robert B. Silvers Prize for Literary Criticism), Rothfeld is the nonfiction book critic for The Washington Post, an editor at the Point, and a contributing editor at Boston Review.

Sep 20, 2024 | publicseminar.org | Emma Minor |Josephine Houman |Chloe Cheimets |Miranda Young

The Circus | Ollyy / Shutterstock The Material opens with a classroom of aspiring comedians workshopping their latest creations: “On Wednesdays, three of them had to perform, in turn, a four-to-six-minute routine that the whole class then proceeded to rip apart, joke by joke, beat by beat, until there wasn’t anything left and the budding comedians went home to consider other possible career paths.” This scene is hilariously reminiscent of budding writers sharing their work for the first time,...