A Celebration of the PEN/Bellwether Prize with Katherine Seligman and Barbara Kingsolver

Thursday, 7:30 pm EDT January 21, 2021

Online Event

Katherine Seligman, winner of the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, joins us in conversation on her lauded new book At the Edge of the Haight. Last awarded in 2016, the PEN/Bellwether prize returns to celebrate Seligman’s debut novel, a story that delves into the culture and community of the homeless in a rapidly changing, tech-driven San Francisco.

She’ll be joined by author and founder of the PEN/Bellwether prize Barbara Kingsolver (The Poisonwood Bible; Animal, Vegetable, Miracle), who established the biennial prize to award works of fiction that address issues pertinent to social justice efforts and expound on the impact of culture and politics on human relationships.

In Conversation

Katherine Seligman

Katherine Seligman

Katherine Seligman is a journalist and author who lives in San Francisco. She has been a writer at the San Francisco Chronicle magazine, a reporter at the San Francisco Examiner and a correspondent at USA Today. Her work has appeared in Redbook, Life, Money, California magazine, the anthology Fresh Takes and elsewhere. At the Edge of the Haight is her first novel.
Barbara Kingsolver

Barbara Kingsolver

Barbara Kingsolver’s work has been translated into more than twenty languages and has earned a devoted readership. Her novel, The Poisonwood Bible, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction and for the PEN/Faulkner Award. The Lacuna won the Orange Prize for Fiction, and Flight Behavior was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. She was awarded the National Humanities Medal, our country’s highest honor for service through the arts, as well as the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for her body of work. Before she made her living as a writer, Kingsolver earned degrees in biology and worked as a scientist. She lives with her family on a farm in southern Appalachia.

Featured Book

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At the Edge of the Haight

By Katherine Seligman

Published by Algonquin Books

Maddy Donaldo, homeless at twenty, has made a family of sorts in the dangerous spaces of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. She knows whom to trust, where to eat, when to move locations, and how to take care of her dog. It’s the only home she has. When she unwittingly witnesses the murder of a young homeless boy and is seen by the perpetrator, her relatively stable life is upended. Suddenly, everyone from the police to the dead boys’ parents want to talk to Maddy about what she saw. As adults pressure her to give up her secrets and reunite with her own family before she meets a similar fate, Maddy must decide whether she wants to stay lost or be found. Against the backdrop of a radically changing San Francisco, a city which embraces a booming tech economy while struggling to maintain its culture of tolerance, At the Edge of the Haight follows the lives of those who depend on makeshift homes and communities.