A Brooklyn Book Festival panel featuring John Keene, Susan Daitch, Jeremy M. Davies, and Christian Lorentzen (moderator), presented by Community Bookstore.

Whether inventing the past from scratch or rewriting its particulars, the avant-garde has long used history as a stage of fruitful experimentation. Contemporary writers are finding new ways to explore a diverse range of topics—from memory and revision to the anecdote and apocrypha—against the backdrop of American and world histories. Three cutting edge writers John Keene (Counternarratives), Susan Daitch (The Lost Civilization of Suolucidir), and Jeremy M. Davies (The Knack of Doing) read from and discuss their new work. Moderated by Christian Lorentzen, New York Magazine’s book critic.

John R. Keene was born in St. Louis in 1965. He graduated from the St. Louis Priory School, Harvard College, and New York University, where he was a New York Times Fellow. In 1989, Mr. Keene joined the Dark Room Writers Collective, and is a Graduate Fellow of the Cave Canem Writers Workshops. He is the author of Annotations, and Counternarratives, both published by New Directions, as well as several other works, including the poetry collection Seismosis, with artist Christopher Stackhouse, and a translation of Brazilian author Hilda Hilst's novel Letters from a Seducer. He teaches at Rutgers University-Newark.

Susan Daitch is the author of four novels: L.C., The Colorist, Paper Conspiracies, The Lost Civilization of Suolucidir, and a collection of short stories, Storytown. Her work has been the recipient of an NEA Heritage Award, a Lannan Foundation Selection, two Vogelstein grants, and a NYFA Fellowship. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in Guernica, Conjunctions, Slice, Tin House, Black Clock, and elsewhere. She has taught at Columbia, the Iowa Writers Workshop, and Hunter College. Her thriller, White Lead, will be published later 2016 by Random House.

Jeremy M. Davies is the author of the novels Rose Alley and Fancy, and most recently the story collection The Knack of Doing. His work has appeared in Asymptote, The White Review, Bomb, The Brooklyn Rail, and The Collagist. Formerly the senior editor of The Dalkey Archive, he is now an editor at FSG.

Christian Lorentzen is the book critic for New York Magazine and editor-at-large at the London Review of Books. His writing has appeared in the New York Observer, n+1, and Rolling Stone, among many other places.

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