Polar exploration, an unemployed professor of African American studies, gigantic hairy ice monsters, motel-quality paintings, Little Debbie Snack cakes, the African diaspora and Edgar Allan Poe’s mysterious novel The Narrative of Arthur G
ordon Pym of Nantucket: these are the reasons (and there are more) why you should come hear Mat Johnson read from his bracing and hilarious novel Pym.
The New York Times Book Review called Pym “relentlessly entertaining,” a starred review in Kirkus praised the book as “An acutely humorous, very original story that will delight lovers of literature and fantasy alike,” and Colson Whitehead, author of Zone One, proclaims:” Pym is a spectacularly sly and nimble-footed send-up of this world, the next world, and all points in between. A satire with heart, as courageous as it is cunning.”
Aside from his novels Pym (Spiegel & Grau, 2011), Drop (Bloomsbury, 2002), and Hunting in Harlem (Bloomsbury, 2004), award-winning author Mat Johnson has also written the comics Incognegro (Vertigo, 2009) and Dark Rain (Vertigo, 2011), and a nonfiction novella titled The Great Negro Plot (Bloomsbury, 2007). He teaches creative writing at the University of Houston.
Thursday, February 9, at 8:15 p.m.
In the Hollins Room; free and open to the public, and followed by a free reception.
Brought to you by the Beanstalk Fund, a joint venture of the Creative Writing Program and the Library.
