Rebecca Solnit in Conversation With Jia Tolentino (Ticketed Virtual Event)

In Recollections of My Nonexistence (Penguin), Rebecca Solnit, author of A Field Guide to Getting Lost and Men Explain Things to Me, describes her formation as a writer and as a feminist in 1980s San Francisco, in an atmosphere of gender violence on the street and throughout society and the exclusion of women from cultural arenas. She tells of being poor, hopeful, and adrift in the city that became her great teacher, and of the small apartment that, when she was 19, became the home in which she transformed herself. She explores the forces that liberated her as a person and as a writer — books themselves; the gay community that presented a new model of what else gender, family, and joy could mean; and her eventual arrival in the spacious landscapes and overlooked conflicts of the American West. Beyond being a memoir, Recollections of My Nonexistence is also a passionate argument: that women are not just impacted by personal experience, but by membership in a society where violence against women pervades. Looking back, she describes how she came to recognize that her own experiences of harassment and menace were inseparable from the systemic problem of who has a voice, or rather who is heard and respected and who is silenced — and how she was galvanized to use her own voice for change. Solnit will be joined in conversation by Jia Tolentino, staff writer at the New Yorker and author of the essay collection, Trick Mirror.

Please note: This is a ticketed event. Purchasing a preorder copy of Recollections of My Nonexistence ($16) entitles you to attend our virtual event with Solnit and Tolentino on Tuesday, March 9, at 5pm (PT). After you’ve purchased the book, we will automatically register you for the Zoom event, and will send you a confirmation email two days prior to the event containing a Zoom link to the event and instructions on how to access it.

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