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Conversations at the Culver:
Stephanie Barbé Hammer with Cati Porter
FREE • Sunday, March 5 • 1:30–3:00 PM
Barbara and Art Culver Center of the Arts
3834 Main Street, Riverside, CA 92501
The world of Stephanie Barbé Hammer’s writing is inhabited by the ghosts of Houdini and David Foster Wallace and Eva Gabor, magical talking tattoos, the trees of the Pacific Northwest, and swimming and puppets, among other things. The veil between the real and the surreal is thin wherever Hammer’s writing goes. Where do her ideas come from? How does publishing a book change her relationship with it? Why the fascination with magical realism? In conversation with Cati Porter, Stephanie will share her secret alchemy for making magically real books.
Stephanie Barbé Hammer is a seven time Pushcart Prize nominee in fiction, nonfiction and poetry and is the author of two poetry collections (How Formal? City Slicker: Encounters with the Outside), two novels (The Puppet Turners of Narrow Interior; Pretend Plumber), a novelette (Rescue Plan), and a how to write magical realism craft book (Delicious Strangeness).
Originally from Manhattan, Stephanie moved to Southern California in 1986. She has lived on the West Coast ever since; she taught at the University of California, Riverside campus for 30 years and she now currently resides on Whidbey Island, Washington State. A professor emerita of Comparative Literature, she teaches creative writing at Hugo House Seattle and Inlandia Institute, Riverside. She is managing editor at SHARK REEF literary magazine (currently on sabbatical) and is culture editor at large and writer at the Journal of Radical Wonder. She sits on the advisory board of Writers Bloc Presents.
Inlandia workshops and events are supported in part by the California Arts Council, a state agency. Learn more at www.arts.ca.gov.
