[New York]

Quijote Talk: Mónica de la Torre
March 28, 2017, 6:30 pm
at MFA Art Writing, SVA, 6th Floor

The Happy End/ All Welcome Mónica de la Torre will give a talk and read from her book The Happy End/ All Welcome. The book is set in a job fair inspired by the Nature Theater of Oklahoma from Kafka's unfinished novel Amerika: the largest theater company in the world is recruiting all kinds of employees. De la Torre builds, fastens, cuts, pastes, performs, and extrudes a variety of poems to suit this most serious situation comedy: poems as job interviews, poems as postings, poems as questionnaires, reports, speeches, lyrical rants... At its heart, this playful bricolage explores the norms of the workplace and its notions of competence, while tackling office design, performativity, and skilled vs. deskilled creative labor. MÓNICA DE LA TORRE is the author of six books of poetry, including The Happy End/ All Welcome (Ugly Duckling Presse) and Feliz año nuevo, a volume of selected poetry translated into Spanish by Cristián Gómez (Luces de Gálibo) forthcoming in the spring of 2017. Born and raised in Mexico City, she translates poetry, writes about art, and is a contributing editor to BOMB Magazine. Recent and upcoming publications include Triple Canopy, Harper's, Poetry, The White Review, The Animated Reader (The New Museum), Erizo, The New Yorker, and huun: arte / pensamiento desde México. She teaches in the Literary Arts program at Brown QUIJOTE TALKS take place in our library on 21st Street, between 6th and 7th Avenues in Chelsea, usually on Thursdays at 6:30 pm. Named after our favorite after-lecture hangout, El Quijote in the Chelsea Hotel, and inspired by the knight errant himself, this new series consists of pointed talks and discussions about relevant pasts and possible futures. Free and open to the public. The talk will take place on the 6th floor. More Information Here.