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Livestream Reading: Megan Galbraith with Liz Prato
June 17, 2021 @ 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
FreeAnnie Bloom’s welcomes author Megan Galbraith for a livestream reading from The Guild of the Infant Saviour: An Adopted Child’s Memory Book. She will be in conversation with Portland author Liz Prato, whose latest book is Volcanoes, Palm Trees & Privilege: Essays on Hawai’i.
Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEufumpqjoqHtSkzzUVZXRHo13aHi9p3XAZ
About The Guild of the Infant Saviour:
Shortly before Roe v. Wade legalized abortion, adoptee Megan Culhane Galbraith was born in a Catholic charity hospital in New York City to a teenaged resident of the Guild of the Infant Saviour, a home for unwed mothers. Decades later, on the eve of becoming a mother herself, she would travel to the former guild site; to her birth mother’s home in Scotland; and to Cornell University, where she discovered the startling history of its Domestic Economics program. There, from 1919 to 1969, coeds applied scientific principles to domesticity as they collectively mothered a rotating cast of babies awaiting adoption. The babies shared the last name Domecon and provided the inspiration for Galbraith’s art project, The Dollhouse. The Guild of the Infant Saviour is a dizzyingly inventive hybrid memoir of one adoptee’s quest for her past. Galbraith pairs narrative with images from The Dollhouse as she weaves a personal and cultural history of adoption as it relates to guilt, shame, grief, identity, and memory itself. Ultimately, she connects her experiences to those of generations of adoptees, to the larger stories America tells about sex and motherhood, and to the shadows those stories cast on us all.
About Megan Galbraith:
Megan Culhane Galbraith is a writer, visual artist, and adoptee. Her work was a Notable Mention in Best American Essays 2017, has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes, and has been published in Tupelo Quarterly, Redivider, Catapult, Hobart, Longreads, and Hotel Amerika, among others. She is Associate Director and a graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars as well as the founding director of the Governor’s Institutes of Vermont Young Writers Institute.
About Volcanoes, Palm Trees & Privilege:
Liz Prato combines lyricism, research and humor to explore her role as a white tourist in a seemingly paradisiacal land that has been largely formed and destroyed by white outsiders. Hawaiian history, pop culture, and contemporary affairs are masterfully woven with her personal narrative of loss and survival in linked essays, offering unique insight into how the touristic ideal of Hawai’i came to be, and what Hawai’i is at its core.
About Liz Prato:
Liz Prato is also an adult adoptee who was relinquished at birth. She did not see her birth certificate for another forty-nine years, and had an unsuccessful and painful attempt at reuniting with her biological family. Liz’s most recent book, Volcanoes, Palm Trees, and Privilege: Essays on Hawai‘i (Overcup Press) was a 2019 New York Times Top Summer Read and a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. She is also the author of Baby’s on Fire: Stories (Press 53), and editor of The Night, and the Rain, and the River (Forest Avenue Press). She is Editor at Large for Forest Avenue Press, and has a new essay collection about GenX forthcoming from SFWP in June 2022.