Milne Library and the Geneseo Literary Forum are proud to support the 2016 “If All of Rochester Reads the Same Book…” Queen of the Fall: A Memoir of Girls & Goddesses by Sonja Livingston. Livingston will be in Geneseo on Monday, March 7th at 6pm in the College Union Ballroom. Ms. Livingston will read from her work and sign books after the presentation. The author will also visit various classes throughout the day. Join us for an engaging reading and refreshments!
In addition, Milne Library & TLC are hosting a book discussion which will take place on Tuesday, March 1st from 4-5:30pm in Milne 208. Coffee, tea, and snacks will be provided. To participate, simply follow the link and sign up. Once you’ve submitted your registration, stop into Milne 214 (Director’s office) to pick up your copy of the book. Please contact Chris Shute at (585) 245-5591 if you have questions.
For more information on the “If All of Rochester Reads the Same Book…” program, please visit Writers & Books at http://wab.org
About the book: Whether pulled from the folds of memory, channeled through the icons of Greek mythology and Roman Catholicism, or filtered through the lens of pop culture, Sonja Livingston’s Queen of the Fall: A Memoir of Girls & Goddesses considers the lives of women. Exploring the legacies of those she has crossed paths with in life and in the larger culture, Livingston weaves together strands of memory with richly imagined vignettes to explore becoming a woman in late 1980s and early 1990s America.
Along the way, the award-winning memoirist brings us face-to-face with herself as an inner-city girl—trying to imagine a horizon beyond poverty, fearful of her fertility and the limiting arc of teenage pregnancy. Livingston looks at the lives of those she’s known: friends who’ve gotten themselves into “trouble,” girls who tell their school counselor small lies out of necessity and pain and a mother whose fruitfulness seems, at times, biblical. Livingston interacts with icons such as Susan B. Anthony, the Virgin Mary, and Ally McBeal to mine the terrain of her own femininity, fertility, and longing.Queen of the Fall is a dazzling meditation on loss, possibility, and, ultimately, what it means to be human.
About the Author: Sonja Livingston’s first book, the memoir Ghostbread, won an AWP Book Prize for Nonfiction and has been adopted for use by classrooms around the nation. Her writing has been honored with a NYFA Fellowship, an Iowa Review Award, and an Arts & Letters Essay Prize, as well as grants from Vermont Studio Center and the Deming Fund for Women.
Her work has appeared in many literary journals including the Iowa Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Southeast Review, Brevity, and AGNI online, and is anthologized in several texts on writing, including Short Takes, The Truth of the Matter, The Curious Writer, and Brief Encounters. An assistant professor in the MFA Program at the University of Memphis, Sonja is married to the artist Jim Mott and divides her time between Tennessee and New York State.
For more information, visit http://sonjalivingston.com
