kate zambreno's reading tips
During the summer, we close the doors of the international house of literature for a few weeks. In the meantime, we’re happy to help you complete your summer reading list with book tips from several authors who took part in this literary season's events. This week, Kate Zambreno gives you a glimpse into their rich library. The Passa Porta team wishes you a wonderful summer and looks forward to welcoming you back for the next literary season.
Reading tips
trans girl suicide museum by Hannah Baer (Hesse Presse)
Worthy of the Event by Vivian Blaxell (Little Puss Press)
When I haven’t been reading from my area exam list on Communism and Desire, I’ve been wanting to read weird and vital work from trans women writers, published on tiny presses. This summer for me it’s been trans girl suicide museum by Hannah Baer (Hesse Presse) and Worthy of the Event by Vivian Blaxell (Little Puss Press). Both take up time in concentrated ways - potent lived philosophy and politics - the time of ketamine jags and early transition for Hannah Baer, for Vivian Blaxell the searching how to tell the events of a life supposed to be marked for early death, beginning with transitioning in the 1960s, but also full of excess and joy.
Essay, fiction, diary, manifesto, autobiography, literary history: Kate Zambreno’s books cannot be reduced to a single genre. The French Nobel Prize winner Annie Ernaux has said in this regard: ‘Kate Zambreno has invented a new form. It is a kind of absolute present, real life captured in close-up.’ The influential author of, among others, Heroines and Drifts, joined Julie Cafmeyer at the Passa Porta Bookshop on 20 May to talk about their life, work and ideas.