Unspeakable Empathy

Leslie Jamison and Meghan Daum In conversation with Molly Pulda, Provost's Postdoctoral Scholar in the Humanities, USC
Thursday, Jul 23, 2015 | 7:15pm Mark Taper Auditorium-Central Library

Leslie Jamison’s critically acclaimed The Empathy Exams confronts our personal and cultural urgency to feel. In The Unspeakable, Los Angeles Times opinion columnist Meghan Daum defiantly pushes back against the false sentimentality and shrink-wrapped platitudes that surround so much of contemporary American experience. With piercing insight and wit, hear from two of today’s most thought-provoking and intimately honest essayists, grappling with the modern complexities of being human.

Meghan Daum

Meghan Daum is the author of four books, most recently the collection of original essays The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion. She is also the editor of Selfish, Shallow & Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not To Have Kids, which was published in March of this year. Her other books include the essay collection My Misspent Youth, the novel The Quality of Life Report, and Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived In That House, a memoir. Since 2005, Daum has been an opinion columnist at The Los Angeles Times, covering cultural and political topics. Meghan has written for numerous magazines, including The New Yorker, Harper’s, and Vogue.

Leslie Jamison

Leslie Jamison has published work in Harper’s, A Public Space, Oxford American, and The Believer. Her debut novel, The Gin Closet, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times First Fiction Prize. She lives in Brooklyn, and is completing a doctorate at Yale University

Molly Pulda

Molly Pulda recently finished a two-year fellowship in the Provost’s Postdoctoral Scholars Program in the Humanities at USC. She teaches at Barnard and Brooklyn College, and is working on a manuscript on secrecy in contemporary literature and culture.

Main image: Early version of cover art for The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison.

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