West Hollywood Lecture Series: 'The Art of Cruelty'

West Hollywood Library, City Council Chambers

CRITICAL STUDIES: This event is part of the Fall 2011 interdisciplinary course cluster The Body Cluster: Writing, Theory, Art, Design at the California Institute of the Arts.  

Maggie Nelson is most recently the author of four books of nonfiction: an acclaimed work of art and cultural criticism, The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning (2011); a meditation on the color blue, Bluets (2009); a critical study of poetry and painting, Women, the New York School, and Other True Abstractions (2007; winner of the Susanne M. Glasscock Award for Interdisciplinary Scholarship, and a Creative Capital/Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant); and an autobiographical book about sexual violence and media spectacle, The Red Parts: A Memoir (2007; named a Notable Book of the Year by the State of Michigan). She is also the author of several books of poetry, including Jane: A Murder (2005; finalist, the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of Memoir), Something Bright, Then Holes (2005), The Latest Winter (2003), and Shiner (2001; finalist, the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award). Her poetry has been widely anthologized, and included in The Best American Poetry series.