This event is a part of the Virginia Festival of the Book’s ongoing Shelf Life virtual series, which is free to attend and open to the public. To attend, please register to take part on Zoom here or simply make plans to watch the livestream on Facebook at facebook.com/vabookfest.
Join us and the Virginia Festival of the Book for a special Shelf Life virtual event in celebration of the paperback launch of Leslie Jamison’s new essay collection, Make It Scream, Make It Burn.
The event will be built around one of the essays in the book, “Museum of Broken Hearts,” and will be focused on the ways we are haunted and inspired by relationships from our past—how broken loves live inside of us through the memories and objects we carry with us. Leslie will be joined by Olinka Vistica, cofounder of the Museum of Broken Relationships in Zagreb, Croatia, and by writers (and friends) Cecilia Laslo, Kyle McCarthy, and Kiki Petrosino. They will each share the stories they contributed to Jamison’s original essay—tales of artifacts that hold the memory of former love. As the essay puts it, “Every object insists that something was, rather than trying to make it disappear.”
The conversation will be moderated by Allison Wright, publisher and executive editor of VQR, which published the original essay in the Spring 2018 issue.
We invite viewers to consider items they might have kept as reminders of broken hearts, for whatever reason, and to share them on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook. Please tag us and the Virginia Festival of the Book (@vabookfest) and use the hashtag #brokenships in your post.
About the Author: Leslie Jamison is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Recovering and The Empathy Exams, and the novel The Gin Closet. She is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, and her work has appeared in publications including The Atlantic, Harper’s, The New York Times Book Review, The Oxford American, and VQR. She directs the graduate nonfiction program at Columbia University and lives in Brooklyn with her family.