SMOTHER and Mojave Ghost | Mechanics' Institute

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SMOTHER and Mojave Ghost
with Rachel Richardson and Forrest Gander

Thursday, March 20, 2025 - 6:00 pm

Join acclaimed poets Rachel Richardson and Forrest Gander in conversation on their recent collections, SMOTHER and Mojave Ghost. Through their writings, both authors explore the rifts between life and death, joy and grief, the personal and the communal, in the wake of climate change and its effects on the California landscape.

Praise for SMOTHER:

"Rachel Richardson’s Smother stares down death, wildfires, a pandemic, and never once flinches. In wanting to 'stand inside the fog . . . [a]nd then to become the fog,' Richardson’s enveloping, and defiant, voice rolls across these pages with authority. In a world on fire and dying of thirst, this book will revive you and make you want to believe in hope again." - Tomás Q. Morín, author of Machete

Praise for Mojave Ghost:

"Powerful, mind-blowing, devastatingly profound, Forrest Gander is among the most extraordinary poets of North American poetry and of the poetry of our time." - Raúl Zurita

 

Rachel Richardson is the author of three books of poetry: SMOTHER, Hundred-Year Wave, and Copperhead, the latter two both selections in the Carnegie Mellon Poetry Series. Her poetry and prose appear in The New York Times Magazine, Lit Hub, Yale Review, APR, Kenyon Review Online, at the Poetry Foundation, on The Slowdown, and elsewhere. She has taught at UNC-Chapel Hill, Stanford, and University of San Francisco's MFA in Creative Writing. She is currently Distinguished Visiting Writer at St. Mary's College of California's MFA in Creative Writing Program. She also offers private writing coaching and editing. Rachel is the Co-Founder of Left Margin LIT, a literary arts center in Berkeley, California. She also directs poetry programming for the Bay Area Book Festival.

A writer and translator with degrees in geology and literature, Forrest Gander was born in the Mojave Desert. Awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the Best Translated Book Award, Gander has been a signal voice for environmental poetics. His most recent books are Mojave Ghost: a Novel Poem and Across/Ground: Photographs by Lukas Felzmann.

Waylaid by the deaths of his wife, mother, and sister, Forrest Gander accepted the invitation of a new immigrant to this country to hike the 750 mile San Andreas Fault. He soon came to realize that both physically and emotionally, he was straddling fractures between trauma and renewal, past and present, the personal and the geological. Mojave Ghost is an account of the journey.

Meet the Author(s)

Admission: 
Members $5
Non-Members $15
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Location: 
4th Floor Meeting Room
Questions?
Programs & Events - 415-393-0116
Register now by using the form below or calling 415-393-0116.
 

 

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