Please join us for an evening of community and conversation featuring the contributors of the new anthology I Know What's Best for You: Stories On Reproductive Freedom. Profits from the event will benefit the Brigid Alliance, a nationwide service that arranges and funds confidential and personal travel support to those seeking abortion care. Participants will include Onnesha Roychoudhuri, Sari Botton, Rebecca Schiff, and Erin Williams.
This event is free with food, drink, or book purchase. Seating is first-come, first-serve, but RSVPs via Eventbrite are appreciated. (They help us stay in touch in case of changes, and they give us an idea of how many people to expect.)
ABOUT THE BOOK:
This explosive, intersectional collection of essays, fiction, poems, plays, and more, explores the universality of human reproductive experiences, as well as their distinct individuality. An enlisted sailor must choose between her military career and keeping an unexpected pregnancy. A mother of three decides to become a surrogate, but is unprepared for everything that happens next. A trans man's pregnancy forces them to approach their key relationships in a new way. A woman's choice to live a child-free life is put to the test when her husband's dying wish is for them to become parents. In their own unique and unforgettable way, each of the twenty-eight contributors responds to our crisis of access to care in ways that are at turns haunting, heartbreaking, and outright funny.
"An urgent, vital collection of essays and fiction, by turns frank and fierce, beautiful and brave. Such voices, and stories are too often silenced or unspoken; it's a gift to hear them now, and a duty to listen." -- Peter Ho Davies, author of A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself
ABOUT OUR GUESTS:
Sari Botton is the author of the memoir in essays, And You May Find Yourself...Confessions of a Late-Blooming Gen-X Weirdo. She is a contributing editor at Catapult, and the former Essays Editor for Longreads. She edited the bestselling anthologies Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving NewYork and Never Can Say Goodbye: Writers on Their Unshakable Love for New York. She teaches creative nonfiction at Catapult, Bay Path University and Kingston Writers' Studio. She publishes Oldster Magazine, Memoir Monday, and Adventures in Journalism.
Onnesha Roychoudhuri is a writer, editor, and educator with over 15 years of experience working at the intersection of storytelling and social justice. Her work has appeared in outlets such as Rolling Stone, This American Life, Kenyon Review, n+1, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Boston Review, McSweeney’s, The Rumpus, The Nation, The American Prospect, Salon, and Mother Jones. Onnesha has read and performed on stages for The Moth, Tedx, Lincoln Center, and more. She is the author of The Marginalized Majority: Claiming Our Power in a Post-Truth America, a Kirkus Best Book of the Year.
Rebecca Schiff is the author of the short story collection The Bed Moved, a finalist for an LA Times Book Prize and a Sami Rohr Prize. Her fiction has appeared in n+1, Electric Literature, Catapult, Fence, Guernica, The Guardian, Buzzfeed, Washington Square, Lenny Letter, and in The Best Small Fictions 2017.
Erin Williams is the author and illustrator of Commute: An Illustrated Memoir of Female Shame and the co-author and illustrator of the Big Activity Book series. She has 10+ years experience in data analysis and scientific research. She lives in New York with her family.
COVID PROTOCOLS:
Rough Draft is no longer requiring masks or social distancing indoors. Event attendees are encouraged to monitor the CDC's guidance based on current community risk level in Ulster County, and to decide what precautions to take and what level of risk is appropriate for them.