Unveiling Desire
Join Jessica Elisheva Emerson, Eowyn Ivey, and R.O. Kwon as they discuss stories that delve into the complexities of women’s desires — artistic, romantic, and spiritual — challenging societal expectations and illuminating the paths toward autonomy and fulfillment.
| Where: | Modern Languages Room 350 (Seats 318, Wheelchair accessible)  |
| When: | Sat, Mar 15, 2:30 pm - 3:25 pm |
| Signing area: | Sales & Signing Area - Central Mall (following presentation)
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| Genre: | Fiction / Literature |
| Moderator: | Anne Gardner |
| Sponsors: | Session made possible courtesy of The William & Mary Ross Foundation, University of Arizona - Facilities Management |
Panelists
Eowyn IveyEowyn Ivey was raised in Alaska and continues to live there with her husband and two daughters. She worked for nearly a decade as a bookseller at independent Fireside Books in Palmer, Alaska, and prior to that as a reporter for the local newspaper, The Frontiersman....
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R.O. KwonR. O. Kwon is the author of "Exhibit" and the nationally bestselling novel "The Incendiaries," which was named a best book of the year by more than 40 publications and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award....
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Books:
Olive Days
A Novel
Jessica Elisheva Emerson
Fiction / Literature
Catapult
September 2024
ISBN 9781640096530
320 pages
Buy nowOlive Days is a completely immersive novel, unlike anything I've read. We're in so deep with Rina, as she navigates the complicated restraints of her Orthodox Jewish community, that every meal, every walk, every discovery of her possible choices feels immediate.
Emerson's prose is not about religion or desire, those abstract ideas, but about a woman's burning disbelief in the very structure of her life, and her absolute insistence on sexual passion and freedom." More/less
Black Woods, Blue Sky
A Novel
Eowyn Ivey
Fiction / Literature
Random House
February 2025
ISBN 9780593231029
Hardcover, 320 pages
Buy nowBirdie’s keeping it together, of course she is. So she's a little hungover sometimes on her shifts, and has to bring her daughter Emaleen to work while she waits tables at an Alaskan roadside lodge, but it's a tough town to be a single mother and Emaleen never goes hungry.
Still, she remembers happier times—trout fishing with her grandfather and hiking in the tundra—being free in the world of nature.
Arthur Neilsen is a soft-spoken recluse, with scars across his face, who brings Emaleen back to safety when she gets lost in the woods one day. He speaks with a strange cadence, appears in town only at the change of seasons, and most people avoid him. But for Birdie, he represents everything she’s ever longed for. He lives in a cabin in the mountains on the far side of the Wolverine River and tells Birdie about the caribou, marmots and wild sheep that share his untamed world. She falls in love with him and the land he knows so well.
Against the warnings of those who care about her, Birdie moves to his isolated cabin.
She and her daughter are alone with Arthur in a vast wilderness, miles from roads, telephones, electricity or outside contact, but Birdie believes she has come prepared. She can start a fire and cook on a woodstove. She has her rifle and fishing rod. In the beginning, it is an idyllic life—the three of them catch salmon, pick berries and swim in sunlit waters. But soon Birdie realizes that she is not at all prepared for what lies ahead: Arthur harbors a dark secret unlike anything she’d ever imagined; and she learns that the Alaska wilderness is as mysterious and dangerous as it is beautiful.
Black Woods, Blue Sky is a suspenseful novel with life-and-death stakes about the love between a mother and daughter, and about the lure of a wild life—about what we gain and what it might cost us. More/less
Exhibit
A Novel
R.O. Kwon
Fiction / Literature
Penguin Publishing Group
May 2024
ISBN 9780593190029
224 pages
Buy now
