Events
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Start: 2:00 pm
Founder of Utne Reader magazine and active on a variety of cultural and civic fronts in his home city of Minneapolis and beyond, Eric Utne was also step-grandson to the late, great Brenda Ueland (1891 – 1985), an iconic figure in the American cultural landscape, most known to readers here for her enduringly popular book, If You Want to Write. Eric Utne is here today to talk about Brenda Ueland—and one of the great loves in a life that had many, the Norwegian explorer, scientist, statesman, athlete Fridtjof Nansen (1861- 1930). Brenda My Darling: The Love Letters of Fridtjof Nansen to Brenda Ueland (Utne Institute) is a fascinating trove of correspondence, edited by Eric Utne. "What is remarkable about these letters is how Nansen opens up and exposes himself for Ueland, who was younger than him by 30 years ... Over 80 years after they were written, these letters take us far from the mists and glaciers of Nansen's Arctic adventures. They give us the opportunity to admire the literary Fridtjof Nansen and his abilities as a writer of love poetry." – Per Egil Hegge, from the Foreword.
Start: 5:00 pm
Also in Seattle for the MLA convention are the editors and many contributors to a major new anthology of writing addressing the intersections of race, gender, ability, class, and sexuality with the prison industrial complex to argue for trans/queer liberation and prison abolition. Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex (AK Press), edited by Eric A. Stanley and Nat Smith, is a collection of writing by current and former prisoners, activists, and academics. Joining Eric A. Stanley tonight are contributors Lori Saffin, Ralowe T. Ampu, and Toshio Meronek. "Captive Genders is at once a scathing and necessary analysis of the prison industrial complex and a history of queer resistance to state tyranny." – Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore. "An exciting assemblage of writings—analyses, manifestos, stories, interviews—that traverse the complicated entanglements of surveillance, policing, imprisonment, and the production of gender normativity ... the contributors to this volume create new frameworks and new vocabularies that surely will have a transformative impact on the theories and practice of twenty-first century abolition." – Angela Y. Davis.
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