112th: Christine Evans with Helen Benedict
Join us Thursday, November 16th at 7pm for a reading with Christine Evans to celebrate the release of Nadia (University Press of Iowa). Helen Benedict will join in conversation.
In order to facilitate this in-person author event, we will be partially closing the second floor starting at 6:45pm. Please review our Safety guidelines and register for the event using the link below.
or register using the following link: https://forms.gle/TtVHKXF2uyhoRS6e7
Nadia moves between the competing perspectives of two survivors of the 1990s Balkan Wars who have escaped to London, only to discover that the war has followed them there. Nadia is a young refugee who just wants to forget the past—until Iggy starts temping at her London office. Afraid he may be a sniper from the war she fled, Nadia starts seeing threats everywhere, alongside unsettling visions of her lost girlfriend, Sanja. As her volatile connection with Iggy unravels, Nadia is forced to face the ethically shaky choices she made to escape the war, her survivor guilt, and her disavowed queer sexuality.
Christine Evans's novel takes us to the recent past of a war that broke apart a European country and that presciently foreshadowed the rise of ethno-nationalism in the West. Tense, suspenseful, and mordantly funny, Nadia tracks the complex ways in which a past marked by political violence can shadow and disrupt the present.
Christine Evans writes internationally produced plays, fiction, and opera libretti. Recent projects include the chamber opera Three Marys at the Sydney Opera House (Composer Andrée Greenwell). Evans is a Professor of Performing Arts at Georgetown University, and lives in Washington, D.C. Visit her at christineevanswriter.com.
Helen Benedict, a professor at Columbia University, has written 8 novels and 6 books of nonfiction, several about war and refugees. Her new novel, The Good Deed, will be published in April 2024. Her most recent nonfiction book, Map of Hope & Sorrow: Stories of Refugees Trapped in Greece, co-authored with Syrian writer and refugee, Eyad Awwadawnan, was published in 2022. A recipient of the 2021 PEN Jean Stein Grant for Literary Oral History, the Ida B. Wells Award for Bravery in Journalism, and the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism for her exposure of sexual predation in the military, Benedict is also the author of The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women at War Serving in Iraq, and a widely-performed play, The Lonely Soldier Monologues. Her writings inspired a class action suit against the Pentagon on behalf of those sexually assaulted in the military and the 2012 Oscar-nominated documentary, The Invisible War. See www.helenbenedict.com.
