PSB: Boston Edition and GrubStreet are excited to welcome Vivian Blaxell to celebrate the release of her book, Worthy of the Event. Calvin Gimpelevich will join Blaxell in conversation. This event will take place on Friday, April 4 at 7pm at PSB: Boston Edition (50 Liberty Drive, Boston, MA 02210).

This event is co-presented by GrubStreet and Porter Square Books

A trans essayist with a checkered past takes on the big questions of human existence

Move over Michel de Montaigne, there's a new girl in town

Set against a backdrop of trans life that begins with her own transition in the 1960s, Vivian Blaxell takes us on a witty and expansive sweep through history, from Australia to Japan, to Hawai'i to Mexico, to heretofore unmapped regions of the mind. In seven devastatingly intelligent parts, her essay covers a vast range in time and space -- from the arson of a Japanese temple to a transformative encounter with a coral reef, from Nietzsche and Hegel to Indigenous metaphysics, from a perplexing relationship with a beautiful man to the unknowable minds of animals. Fleshy and philosophical, searching and exalted, utterly distinctive and assured, Worthy of the Event belatedly establishes Vivian Blaxell as one of the major writers of her generation.

Vivian Blaxell grew up in rural Australia and co-founded Tiresias House, Australia’s first shelter and resource centre for and by trans people. Her essay "Nuclear Cats" was shortlisted for the 2021 Melbourne Prize for Literature. She lives in Naarm/Melbourne, VIC, Australia. Worthy of the Event is her first book."

Calvin Gimpelevich is an NEA Fellow, the recipient of a Lambda Literary Award, and the author of Invasions (Instar 2018). His work has been recognized by Artist Trust, Jack Straw Cultural Center, 4Culture, CODEX/Writer’s Block, Studios at MASS MoCA, and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts; it has appeared or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, A Public Space, and The Best American Essays 2022. He runs the T4T Reading Series in Boston, MA. He is represented by Noah Grey Rosenzweig at triangle.house.

Vivian Blaxell, author of Worthy of the Event, in conversation with Calvin Gimpelevich