Susan Harlan, Tote Bags as Autobiography

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Evenings with an Author

The American Library in Paris

18 episodes

21 hours ago

Recorded live at The American Library in Paris, the Evenings with an Author series features talks from authors, filmmakers, musicians, journalists, scholars, and other public figures. These talks happen over 60 times per year in the Library's Florence Gould Reading Room, and are supported by generous donations from GRoW @ Annenberg, library members, and those who attend programs. For more information about Evenings with an Author, visit americanlibraryinparis.org/evenings-at-the-library.

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Susan Harlan, Tote Bags as Autobiography

Evenings with an Author

1 hour 3 minutes 41 seconds

5 years ago

Susan Harlan, Tote Bags as Autobiography

Please join us for a fun and informal talk by author and professor Susan Harlan, who has the rare gift of making the ordinary extraordinary for her readers and audiences. Susan will share with us a personal essay about the tote bags she’s acquired on her travels and throughout her life, touching on themes that are at the forefront of our minds right now: travel, home, souvenirs, including unused bags and luggage. In her words, “I keep looking at my purses on my coat rack and thinking how strange it is to not carry a purse anymore. They just hang there, and then every eight days or so I go to the store. Beyond the present circumstances, the tote bags make up a kind of autobiography, and they tell stories about where they are from and what they have toted around.”

Susan Harlan’s essays have appeared in venues including The Guardian US, The Paris Review Daily, Guernica, Roads & Kingdoms, Literary Hub, The Common, Racked, The Brooklyn Quarterly, The Bitter Southerner, and Public Books. Her book Luggage (Bloomsbury, 2018) takes readers on a journey with the suitcases that support, accessorize, and accompany our lives. She also writes satire for McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Billfold, Avidly, Queen Mob’s Tea House, The Hairpin, The Belladonna, Janice, and The Establishment, and her humor book Decorating a Room of One’s Own: Conversations on Interior Design with Miss Havisham, Jane Eyre, Victor Frankenstein, Elizabeth Bennet, Ishmael, and Other Literary Notables was published by Abrams last October. She teaches English literature at Wake Forest University.

*Covid-19 Update: Although our physical space has temporarily closed, the Library will continue with its Evening with an Author programming during the period of confinement. Our events will continue to be free and open to the public, via Zoom (please RSVP here to receive meeting details and password). We have moved the events up, to begin at 17h00 (Central European Time). Please check eLibris or our programs calendar for updates and line-up.

Recorded 28 April 2020