Gish Jen, the acclaimed author of many novels, short stories and thought-provoking essays, will return to South End Writes to discuss her widely praised eighth novel, The Resisters, on Tuesday, February 2, at 7 PM. via ZOOM. Jen visited the South End library in 2017 to present her earlier work of fiction, The Girl at the Baggage Claim: Explaining the East-West Culture Gap.

The first paragraph in the  New York Times review of The Resisters describes a searing picture of a world we hope we will never see but which conceptually appears increasingly close at hand: The Resisters “ … imagines a society even more catastrophically divided than our own. In Jen’s AutoAmerica, almost all of the jobs have been automated and rising seas have swamped large sections of the country. The privileged, known as the “Netted,” have “angelfair” skin and live on high ground, while the “Surplus,” whose skin is often “coppertoned,” suffer on swampland and rickety houseboats…”

The author, a Cambridge resident, has published short work in the New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly, and dozens of other periodicals, anthologies and textbooks. Her work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories four times, including The Best American Short Stories of the Century, edited by John Updike.  Nominated for a National Book Critics’ Circle Award, her work was featured in a PBS American Masters’ special on the American novel and is widely taught.

The author is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  She has been awarded a Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, a Guggenheim fellowship, a Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study fellowship, and a Mildred and Harold Strauss Living; she has also delivered the William E. Massey, Sr. Lectures in the History of American Civilization at Harvard University.

TO CONNECT VIA ZOOM:

Email info@friendsofsouthendlibrary.org and you will receive the ZOOM info. FOSEL subscribers will receive the ZOOM link in our Mailchimp newsletter just before the event.