BOOK CLUB 101
NYU Skirball’s Book Club is back! We pair each production in our season with a complementary book – novels, short stories, essays, poetry, memoirs. Whether or not you have a chance to see the show, you can pick up the book and join us via Zoom for an informal discussion.
How does it work? RSVP with your e-mail address so we can send you the Zoom link on the day of the event. After a brief introduction, we will shift participants into self-led breakout rooms, in groups of about 10, so everyone can participate in a discussion before coming back to the main room to wrap up. Need a copy of the book? Order a copy from our bookshop.org list, and NYU Skirball will receive a portion of the proceeds.
ABOUT THE BOOK
R E D is an erasure of Bram Stoker’s Dracula – using language carved from the original text to create a new narrative of violence, sexual abuse, power dynamics, vengeance, and feminist rage, and wrestles with the complexities of gender, transition, and monsterhood.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chase Berggrun is a trans woman poet. She is the author of R E D (Birds, LLC, 2018). Her poems and essays have appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry Magazine, Poem-A-Day, PEN Poetry Series, Sixth Finch, Diagram, and elsewhere. She received her MFA from New York University, and lives in Brooklyn.
WHY THIS BOOK?
R E D is paired with Sibyl Kempson / 7 Daughters of Eve Thtr. & Perf. Co.’s THE SECURELY CONFERRED, VOUCHSAFED KEEPSAKES OF MAERY S. – live at the Chocolate Factory on Oct 31 & available to stream online from Nov. 4-Dec. 22. Kempson’s work takes Mary Shelley’s life and work as a starting point, building layers on the mythology of the woman who invented the novel. Berggrun works with another foundational Gothic text, paring Stoker’s words away to reveal a new narrative. Both of these works take inspiration and material from canonical works of fiction, exploring their ideas and impacts in new mediums.
