Reading Groups

Abortion in Literature and Memoir with Lily Andrews

4 Sessions Saturdays, 11:30 am EDT - 1:00 pm EDT March 22 to June 14, 2025

The Center for Fiction

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The ‘With Books’ option includes the titles required for this group at a 10% discount from our Bookstore.

Meeting Dates:
3/22, 4/19, 5/17, 6/14
In Person at The Center for Fiction

Two years after Roe vs. Wade was overturned, Honor Moore’s memoir, A Termination, reveals a new truth: that a shared history of abortion freedoms — whether before or during Roe — was never written. Perhaps the topic has not yet been understood. In this reading group, we will attempt to expand our understanding of the important and prevalent issue of abortion through a close reading of four books, both memoir and fiction. We will examine the personal and the political, and analyze both the social and the individual nature of abortion through the perspectives of women. Expect to read insightfully and discuss sensitively.

What to read in advance of the first meeting: Participants should read Brit Bennett’s The Mothers in its entirety by the first session. Further reading (and some short writing) assignments will follow.

What to expect from this reading group: This course will be participant driven and conversational.

Reading List:

The Mothers by Brit Bennett
Red Clocks by Leni Zumas
Happening by Annie Ernaux
A Termination by Honor Moore

Supplementary poems, stories, essays & excerpts provided by workshop instructor, which may include John Irving, Ernest Hemingway, Gwendolyn Brooks, Lucille Clifton, Anne Sexton, Barbara Johnson, Zadie Smith & Joyce Carol Oates.

Capacity: 20

Led by

Lily Andrews

Lily Andrews

Lily Andrews is a creative nonfiction writer from Minneapolis, MN. Her poetry has appeared in Ghost City Press, Sonora Review, and Ignatian Magazine. Her poem, “Speech,” was awarded Honorable Mention in the American Academy of Poets contest at Hunter College. She has written nonfiction for the Rio Grande Review, MNOpedia, the Middlebury Campus, AL.com, and most recently Cutthroat: A Journal for the Arts, where she won the Barry Lopez 2024 Nonfiction contest for an essay titled “Abortion, Alabama.” She holds an MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence and a Masters in Adolescent English Education from Hunter (CUNY). While at Sarah Lawrence, she helped to relaunch Lumina, the student literary magazine. She is at work on a coming-of-age memoir and meets with a fellow writer to discuss work-in-progress every-other week. Often closely examining the self in society in her writing, Lily is a lifelong student of gender, sexuality and feminism, and brings critical sociological lenses to her work.

About this series

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