Thrilled to welcome Judith Barrington, the award-winning memoirist and poet, who will be reading from her new collection of short memoirs, Virginia’s Apple, published this month by OSU Press. She will be in conversation with Jules Ohman, author of Body Grammar.
About Virginia’s Apple
"When we are able to move fluidly through the past, present, and future by looking back on a life, I believe we become new creatures in our own lives. Judith Barrington's brilliant collection of linked life stories, Virginia's Apple: Collected Memoirs, is a thrilling book that pulls memories through creative visionary transmography. I felt like I was swimming inside the imagination of all the brilliant women who came before me and who have kept me alive, as well as those who are coming after us. With poetic and erotic power, this book helped me remember to keep going as long as it takes for change to emerge. What a triumph. I feel gratitude.” — Lidia Yuknavitch
The fourteen literary memoirs collected in Virginia's Apple explore pivotal episodes across poet and writer Judith Barrington's life. Artfully crafted, each one stands alone yet they are linked--characters reappear and, taken together, the pieces create a larger narrative. The content is wide-ranging: the early days of the Second Wave of feminism--the exhilaration, the wildness, the love affairs, the surprises, and the self-invention, as well as the confusion and conflicts of those heady times; navigating a sometimes precarious existence as an out lesbian long before it was commonplace; leaving England and becoming an American citizen; finding a life partner; and growing old with an inherited disability. The author's friendship with the distinguished poet Adrienne Rich is the subject of one story. In another, there's an appearance by the notorious murderer, Lord Lucan, whose wife was a chance acquaintance. These stories are laced with humor and joy, while pulsing below the surface is the slow unfolding of delayed grief over her parents' drowning when she was nineteen, revealing how such a loss can shape a life.
About Judith Barrington
Judith Barrington is the author of Lifesaving: A Memoir, winner of the Lambda Literary Award and a finalist for the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir. She is also the author of the bestselling Writing the Memoir: From Truth to Art, which is used across the U.S., Australia, and Europe. Barrington has published five collections of poetry and two poetry chapbooks. She lives in Portland, Oregon.
About Jules Ohman
Jules Ohman is the author of their debut novel, Body Grammar, a coming-of-age queer love story set in the glamorous yet grueling world of international modeling, published by Vintage in 2022. Jules’s work has appeared in Buckmxn Journal,Electric Literature,Lit Hub,Willow Springs, and others. They were recently the Kittredge Distinguished Visiting Writer in the University of Montana’s MFA program. Jules teaches and writes in Portland, Oregon.