NOTE: Empower Hour has been postponed. Stay tuned for more information in the coming weeks about a new date for Empower Hour – we can’t wait to celebrate with you.
“It seems absurd that no one has written about abuse in queer relationships like this before.”
- Women’s Review of Books
Meet Empower Hour Keynote Speaker:
Carmen Maria Machado
Machado’s writing defies and blends genres such as surrealism, fantasy, and horror to create writing that is so palpable it seems alive. Her work has been compared to that of Shirley Jackson, Kelly Link and Angela Carter, but with a voice that is uniquely her own.
Her spellbinding debut short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties, was longlisted for the National Book Award before it was even published. It was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Kirkus Prize, and it was the winner of the Bard Fiction Prize, the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, the Brooklyn Public Library Literature Prize, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize. In 2018, the New York Times listed Her Body and Other Parties as a member of “The New Vanguard,” one of “ 15 remarkable books by women that are shaping the way we read and write fiction in the 21st century.” The collection has been optioned by FX and a television show is in development, described by some as a "feminist Black Mirror."
Her latest, a memoir titled In the Dream House, was Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, was the #1 Indie Next Pick for November 2019, and received starred reviews from Kirkus, Booklist, and Publishers Weekly. Of Carmen and her memoir, the New York Times writes, “Welcome to the House of Machado. Proceed directly into the forbidden room; enjoy the view as the floor gives way.”
Carmen holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is the Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, and lives in Philadelphia with her wife.
“In the Dream House further cements Machado’s status as one of the leading writers today.”
- Refinery29