Monday, October 26, 2020
6 to 7 PM EST / 3 to 4 PM PST

Electric Literature executive director Halimah Marcus talks to Marie-Helene Bertino and Elissa Washuta about coping with trauma and subverting expectations at the intersection of magic and reality. They will discuss how magic works in practice and as a rhetorical device in fiction.

Marie-Helene Bertino is the author of the novels Parakeet (NY Times Editors' Choice) and 2 a.m. at The Cat's Pajamas, and the story collection Safe as Houses. Her work has received The O. Henry Prize, The Pushcart Prize, The Iowa Short Fiction Award, and in 2017 she was the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Fellow in Cork, Ireland. She teaches in the M.F.A. programs of NYU, The New School, and Institute of American Indian Arts and lives in Brooklyn, where she was the Associate Editor for One Story and Catapult. Her fourth book, the novel Beautyland, is forthcoming from FSG in 2022.

Elissa Washuta is a member of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe and a nonfiction writer. She is the author of My Body Is a Book of Rules and Starvation Mode, and her book White Magic is forthcoming from Tin House Books. With Theresa Warburton, she is co-editor of the anthology Shapes of Native Nonfiction: Collected Essays by Contemporary Writers. She has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Creative Capital, Artist Trust, 4Culture, and Potlatch Fund. Elissa is an assistant professor of creative writing at the Ohio State University.

Magical Feminism, an editorial discussion