Reading Groups

Members Only: The Literarians

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Wednesday, 12:30 pm EST - 2:00 pm EST January 13, 2021

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Indelicacy by Amina Cain

The Literarians will be held online via Zoom. Members who have RSVP’d will be contacted with instructions for joining. Please email Allison Escoto at allison@centerforfiction.org with any questions.

The Literarians is a free monthly discussion group open to members of The Center. Led by our head librarian Allison Escoto, The Literarians read a wide variety of contemporary fiction. New participants are welcome throughout the year!

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Up Next:
Indelicacy by Amina Cain

Previous Selections:

  • Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami
  • A Burning by Megha Majumdar
  • The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
  • Deacon King Kong by James McBride
  • Apeirogon by Colum McCann
  • Milkman by Anna Burns
  • Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli
  • Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips
  • The Topeka School by Ben Lerner
  • Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson
  • Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
  • Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk
  • The Parisian by Isabella Hammad
  • Normal People by Sally Rooney
  • The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
  • On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
  • Trust Exercise by Susan Choi
  • Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday
  • The Burning Girl by Claire Messud
  • An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
Indelicacy by Amina Cain

Led by

  • Allison Escoto

    Allison Escoto

    Head Librarian

    Allison Escoto

    Head Librarian

    New Yorker by way of New Orleans, Allison Escoto received her BA in Creative Writing from SUNY New Paltz and closed out the 90s as a bookseller in Greenwich Village. After several years in publishing, she pursued and received her MLS from Queens College. Since then she has worked as a librarian for 15 years in various libraries in and around NYC and has been moonlighting as a poet and copywriter. She is the Associate Editor for Newtown Literary Journal, a publication dedicated to featuring writers from her beloved Queens.

Up Next

  1. . 
    Indelicacy by Amina Cain

    Indelicacy

    By Amina Cain

    Published by FSG

    PURCHASE

    In a strangely ageless world somewhere between Emily Dickinson and David Lynch (Blake Butler), a cleaning woman at a museum of art nurtures aspirations to do more than simply dust the paintings around her. She dreams of having the liberty to explore them in writing, and so must find a way to win herself the time and security to use her mind. She escapes her lot by marrying a rich man, but having gained a husband, a house, high society, and a maid, she finds that her new life of privilege is no less constrained. Not only has she taken up different forms of time-consuming labor—social and erotic—but she is now, however passively, forcing other women to clean up after her. Perhaps another and more drastic solution is necessary?

    Reminiscent of a lost Victorian classic in miniature, yet taking equal inspiration from such modern authors as Jean Rhys, Octavia Butler, Clarice Lispector, and Jean Genet, Amina Cain’s Indelicacy is at once a ghost story without a ghost, a fable without a moral, and a down-to-earth investigation of the barriers faced by women in both life and literature. It is a novel about seeing, class, desire, anxiety, pleasure, friendship, and the battle to find one’s true calling.

About this series

Reading Groups

Whether you’re looking to catch up on great novels or you’re interested in exploring a new writer or literary period, our reading groups offer high-level literary discussion led by experts in the field.

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