Cli-Fi: Nathaniel Rich and Kate Walbert
Tuesday, February 21st, 2017 | 7:30 PM
Purchase a single ticket for $15
Folger Shakespeare Library
201 East Capitol St., SE
Washington, DC 20003 (map)
The latest novels of Nathaniel Rich (Odds Against Tomorrow) and Kate Walbert (The Sunken Cathedral) masterfully portray visions of climate, landscape, and contemporary American life all in a state of flux.Their recent novels press us to more carefully consider our understandings of environmental and climate change, urban life and locations, and the implications of our landscapes edging towards doom. Join us on Tuesday, February 21st for what is sure to be a crucial and timely conversation on environmental disaster and the role fiction plays in the broader debate.
Nathaniel Rich is the author of two novels: Odd Against Tomorrow and The Mayor’s Tongue. He is a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine and his essays have appeared in The New York Review of Books, The Atlantic, Harper’s, Rolling Stone, and The Daily Beast. Rich’s novel Odds Against Tomorrow introduces us to an insurance analyst who, after accurately predicting natural disaster, braves the rising tides of a submerged city. Rich currently lives in New Orleans.
“This brilliantly conceived and extremely well-executed novel…is the opposite of a disaster, a knockout book by a young writer to keep your eye on.”
-Alan Cheuse, All Things Considered
Kate Walbert is the author of A Short History of Women, chosen by The New York Times Book Review as one of the ten best books of 2009 and a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize, Our Kind, a finalist for the National Book Award in fiction in 2004, The Gardens of Kyoto, winner of the 2002 Connecticut Book Award in Fiction in 2002, and Where She Went, a collection of linked stories and New York Times notable book. Her most recent novel The Sunken Cathedral tells the intersecting stories of neighbors in a weather-threatened, flood-prone Manhattan. She currently lives in New York City with her family.
“A powerful elegy for a fading New York City and for the planet as a whole.”
–Courtney Sullivan, The Boston Globe