9th Ave: Selby Wynn Schwartz with Celeste Chan

Tuesday, January 31, 2023 - 7:00pm

Cover of Selby Wynn Schwartz's After Sappho. The cover is royal blue with paintings of feminine figures in the style of Greek pottery painting in dark orange, white, and black, sitting in a circle around the book's title. The top right corner in white writing reads "The Booker Prize 2022"
Join us on Tuesday, January 31 at 7pm PT when Selby Wynn Schwartz celebrates the release of her book, After Sappho, with Celeste Chan at 9th Ave!

Masks Required for In-Person Attendance
Or watch online at the link below
https://youtu.be/f3PM77ooBIA

Praise for After Sappho
"[A] brilliant debut novel... The collective first-person “we” narrator—a Greek chorus devoted to the female poet Sappho—weaves the stories of writers, painters, and performers who, like Sappho, are attracted to women and are determined to become their authentic selves through art.... As the chorus narrates, 'we were plunged back into a history we had barely survived the first time.' Schwartz’s account of what happens next as the central characters resist oppression speaks volumes on their efforts, and she contributes her own work of art with this irresistible narrative. Schwartz breathes an astonishing sense of life into her timeless characters." - Publishers Weekly, starred review

"After Sappho is a project of both imagination and intimacy, but also of significant research. Schwartz’s protagonists are all real people, but she has captured the essence of their lives and identities by means of what she describes as 'speculative biographies'. One of the beauties of this strange, spellbinding novel – other, that is, than the dreamlike, pellucid writing – is this merging of fact and fiction, historical record and artistic vision." - Lucy Scholes, The Telegraph

"A highly original, practically uncategorisable novel... Sarah Bernhardt, Virginia Woolf, the Italian writer and lesbian Lina Poletti, plus a host of other lesser-known women who pushed against the conventions of the time — all are given fresh life in this entrancing choric collage of a novel which seems to speak both in one voice and in multitudes all at the same time... I loved it." - Claire Allfree, Daily Mail

About After Sappho
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 BOOKER PRIZE

An exhilarating debut from a radiant new voice, After Sappho reimagines the intertwined lives of feminists at the turn of the twentieth century.

The first thing we did was change our names. We were going to be Sappho,” so begins this intrepid debut novel, centuries after the Greek poet penned her lyric verse. Ignited by the same muse, a myriad of women break from their small, predetermined lives for seemingly disparate paths: in 1892, Rina Faccio trades her needlepoint for a pen; in 1902, Romaine Brooks sails for Capri with nothing but her clotted paintbrushes; and in 1923, Virginia Woolf writes: “I want to make life fuller and fuller.” Writing in cascading vignettes, Selby Wynn Schwartz spins an invigorating tale of women whose narratives converge and splinter as they forge queer identities and claim the right to their own lives. A luminous meditation on creativity, education, and identity, After Sappho announces a writer as ingenious as the trailblazers of our past.

“This book is splendid: Impish, irate, deep, courageous. . . . Brava!”—Lucy Ellmann, author of Ducks, Newburyport

About Selby Wynn Schwartz
Selby Wynn Schwartz holds a PhD in comparative literature from the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of The Bodies of Others: Drag Dances and Their Afterlives, a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, and the forthcoming novella A Life in Chameleons.

Staff Pick Badge
After Sappho: A Novel By Selby Wynn Schwartz Cover Image
$28.95
ISBN: 9781324092315
Availability: Click the TITLE to view store availability
Published: Liveright - January 24th, 2023

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2023
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 BOOKER PRIZE
Finalist for the Publishing Triangle's Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction
Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Washington Post, TIME and The Guardian
A New York Times Editors' Choice Selection


The Bodies of Others: Drag Dances and Their Afterlives (Triangulations: Lesbian/Gay/Queer Theater/Drama/Performance) By Selby Wynn Schwartz Cover Image
Not available to order
ISBN: 9780472054091
Published: University of Michigan Press - March 15th, 2019

The Bodies of Others explores the politics of gender in motion. From drag ballerinas to faux queens, and from butoh divas to the club mothers of modern dance, the book delves into four decades of drag dances on American stages. Drag dances take us beyond glittery one-liners and into the spaces between gender norms.


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