Rich Benjamin & Sloane Crosley in Conversation with Amelia Possanza, Sponsored by the Authors Guild
Thursday, March 26 3:20-4:25 p.m. PT
Petree Hall D, Los Angeles Convention Center, Level 1
How do writers fill absences? Great literature is often created when the author writes the book only they can write—the book they want to read but that does not yet exist. Rich Benjamin is the author of the award-winning Searching for Whitopia and, most recently, Talk to Me: Lessons from a Family Forged by History, a grandson’s account of the coup that ended his grandfather’s presidency of Haiti. Sloane Crosley is the author of the New York Times bestselling books Grief Is for People, How Did You Get This Number, and I Was Told There’d Be Cake, as well as Look Alive Out There (a 2019 finalist for The Thurber Prize for American Humor) and the novels Cult Classic and The Clasp. Benjamin and Crosley will read from their work, followed by conversation with Amelia Possanza, book publicist and Lambda Award–winning author of Lesbian Love Story: A Memoir in Archives.
Panelist bios:
Rich Benjamin is the author of Talk to Me: Lessons from a Family Forged by History. His first book, Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America, was selected for an Editor’s Choice Award from the American Library Association. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and elsewhere, and he’s often interviewed in international and national media. His work has received support from the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, the Ford Foundation, Princeton University, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Harvard Radcliffe Institute.
Sloane Crosley is the author of the New York Times bestselling books Grief Is for People, How Did You Get This Number, and I Was Told There’d Be Cake. She also wrote Look Alive Out There and the novels Cult Classic and The Clasp, both of which she has adapted for film. She was the inaugural columnist for The New York Times Townies series, a contributing editor at Interview Magazine, and a columnist for The Village Voice, Vanity Fair, and others. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Vogue, and The Atlantic, among others. She has taught in Columbia University’s MFA program and at Dartmouth College and the Yale Writers’ Workshop. She lives in New York City.
Photo credit: Jennifer Livingston
Amelia Possanza (she/her) is a full-time book publicist and part-time writer. Her debut book Lesbian Love Story: A Memoir in Archives was named a best book of 2023 and received the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir/Biography. Her work has also appeared in The Washington Post, NPR’s Invisibilia, and The Queer Love Project. She teaches creative writing to high schoolers through Lambda Literary’s Writers in Schools program and coaches swimming with Team New York Aquatics.
Photo credit: Becca Farsace