In Conversation with Robin Black, author of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway Bookmarked (In-Person)

This program is sponsored by Jacqueline and Eric Kraeutler

Registration

• Admission is $15. 50% off for Rosenbach members, free for the Delancey Society. Not a member? Learn more.
• This is an in-person program at The Rosenbach and requires proof of vaccination. Please check your spam folder for your email confirmation. If you have questions, please call (215) 732-1600 or email [email protected].
• Registration opens for Delancey Society members on July 18, for members on July 25, and for the general public on August 1.

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Description

“At fifty-nine, I am now the age Virginia Woolf was when she took that final, heavy-pocketed walk into The River Ouse. I am the age at which she killed herself, and I am not going to kill myself; but I was by no means always sure of that.” 

Join us in conversation with Robin Black to hear about her new book Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway Bookmarked, a deeply intimate volume that deftly blends personal stories with essays on the craft of writing. Black writes about Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, a book she returned to again and again when she began writing at nearly forty and found herself gaining a sense of emotional stability for the first time in her life. For two decades, Mrs. Dalloway has been Black’s partner in a crucial, ongoing conversation about writing and about the emotional life. Now, she takes a deep dive into both the craft of the book, what a writer might learn from its mechanics, and also into the humanity to be found on every page.

About Mrs. Dalloway

Considered Virginia Woolf’s greatest novel, Mrs. Dalloway tells the story of a single day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a high society woman in post-World War I England. As she is preoccupied with the last-minute details of dinner party, Clarissa is flooded with remembrances of the past, in the process reexamining the choices she has made, as well as looking toward old age. Written in a stream of consciousness style, Mrs. Dalloway is one of the most important novels in literature. 

About the Speaker 

Robin Black’s story collection, If I loved you, I would tell you this, was a finalist for the Frank O’Connor International Story Prize, and named a Best Book of 2010 by numerous publications, including the Irish Times. Her novel, Life Drawing, was longlisted for the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize, the Impac Dublin Literature Prize, and the Folio Prize. Her fiction has been translated into Italian, French, German, and Dutch.  

Robin’s most recent book is Crash Course: Essays From Where Writing And Life Collide. Robin’s work can be found in such publications as One Story, The New York Times Book Review, The Chicago Tribune, Southern Review, The Rumpus, O. Magazine, Conde Nast Traveler UK, and numerous anthologies, including The Best Creative Nonfiction Vol. I (Norton) and The Best of the Bellevue Literary Review. Robin lives with her husband in Philadelphia and teaches in the Rutgers-Camden MFA Program.