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Rachel Kushner: What it means to be free
In conversation with the Man Booker finalist
As the Premier Partner of this year's Sydney Writers' Festival, we are proud to present this exclusive, on-campus event with one of America's most acclaimed writers.
Having dazzled readers with turns through pre-revolutionary Cuba () and 1970s New York (), Rachel Kushner鈥檚 exceptional literary streak continued last year with , immersing readers in the largest women鈥檚 prison in the United States.
Reckoning with incarceration and inequality, The Mars Room is heartbreaking, funny and essential reading from a novelist at the peak of her powers.
The University of Sydney warmly welcomes Rachel for a conversation with novelist and queer feminist scholar Professor Annamarie Jagose on writing today and a body of work that spans eras, borders and inner lives.
Praise for The Mars Room
鈥淥ne of the most gifted novelists of her generation鈥攐n the same tier as Jennifer Egan and the two Jonathans, Franzen and Lethem鈥� It鈥檚 one of those books that enrage you even as they break your heart, and in its passion for social justice you can finally discern a connection between all three of Kushner鈥檚 novels鈥︹��
鈥擟harles McGrath, The New York Times Book Review
鈥淎 major novel, a sustained performance, one that broods on several exigent ideas鈥� There have always been echoes of laconic but resonant writers like Robert Stone and Don DeLillo in Kushner鈥檚 prose. In The Mars Room, she dwells as well on Dostoyevskian notions of evil.鈥�
鈥擠wight Garner, The New York Times
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This event was held on Thursday 2 May, 2019 at the University of Sydney.
The speakers
Rachel Kushner鈥檚 debut novel,听Telex from Cuba, was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award, a听New York Times听bestseller and Notable Book. Her follow-up novel,听The Flamethrowers, was also a finalist for the National Book Award. Her fiction has appeared in听The New Yorker,听贬补谤辫别谤鈥檚, and听The Paris Review. She is the recipient of a 2013 Guggenheim Fellowship and the 2016 Harold D. Vursell Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her latest novel,听The Mars Room, was a finalist for the 2018 Man Booker Prize.听
is the Dean of the at the University of Sydney. She is internationally known as a scholar in feminist, lesbian/gay and queer studies. She is the author of four scholarly monographs, most recently听Orgasmology, a critical consideration of orgasm across the long twentieth century.听Annamarie听is also an award-winning novelist. Her last novel,听Slow Water, was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and won the Deutz Medal for Fiction at the Montana New Zealand Book Awards and the Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction at the Victorian Premier鈥檚 Literary Awards.