“WEHO READS” PRESENTS RENOWNED AUTHOR CHRIS KRAUS IN CONVERSATION WITH WEST HOLLYWOOD CITY POET LAUREATE KIM DOWER
WeHo Reads presents internationally renowned author, critic, editor, and Guggenheim Fellow Chris Kraus in conversation with West Hollywood City Poet Laureate Kim Dower. Among Kraus’ works are the best-selling 1997 novel I Love Dick – recently adapted by Jill Soloway (Transparent) as a TV series starring Kevin Bacon – and her latest, After Kathy Acker (2017), a revealing biography of the experimental writer and artist. She joins Dower – author of three collections of poetry – to discuss the influence poetry has had on her work, and how love, longing, and obsession continue to ignite her themes and interests.
Guests are encouraged to bring their most soul searching questions for the Q&A. The event will be followed by a signing with books available for purchase onsite from Book Soup. Admission is free, but space is limited – to be certain of a seat, please RSVP here: https://wehoreads-chriskraus.eventbrite.com (City Council Chambers at West Hollywood Library, 625 N. San Vicente Blvd., 90069).
Now based in Los Angeles, Chris Kraus was born in New York City, and spent formative years in New Zealand, where she became politically and intellectually active during her undergraduate years at Victoria University of Wellington. She is co-editor – along with Sylvère Lotringer and Hedi El Kholti – of Semiotext(e), one of America’s most influential and avant-garde independent presses since its inception more than three decades ago. Her work is also published by Semiotext(e), and in addition to titles already mentioned include the novels Aliens & Anorexia (2000), Torpor (2006), and Summer of Hate (2012), and her examination of the 1990s Los Angeles art world, Video Green: Los Angeles Art and the Triumph of Nothingness (2004). Her body of work spans autobiography, biography, fiction, criticism, and philosophy. In The New York Times, Holland Cotter has written that she is “one of our smartest and most original writers on contemporary art and culture.”
Kim Dower is West Hollywood’s second City Poet Laureate (following Steven Reigns). Her tenure began in October 2016, and continues through October 2018. A West Hollywood resident for more than 30 years, she was born and raised in New York City and received a BFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College, where she also taught. She has three collections of poetry, Air Kissing on Mars (2010), Slice of Moon (2013), Last Train to the Missing Planet (2016), all published by Red Hen Press. Kim’s writing has also appeared in Ted Kooser’s “American Life in Poetry,” Barrow Street, Eclipse, Los Angeles Review, Ploughshares, and Rattle. Her poems are in anthologies including, Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond, published by The Pacific Coast Poetry Series (Beyond Baroque Books) and Coiled Serpent: Poets Arising from the Cultural Quakes & Shifts in Los Angeles (Tia Chucha Press).
WeHo Reads (www.weho.org/wehoreads), an ongoing series that honors reading and all things literary, is presented by the City of West Hollywood’s WeHo Arts program. WeHo Reads events are co-sponsored or co-presented by the West Hollywood Library, the Friends of the West Hollywood Library, and @Book Soup.
Pictured: L: Chris Kraus, R: Kim Dower
