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Bruna Dantas Lobato and Andrea Lawlor celebrate Caio Fernando Abreu

June 14, 2022 @ 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Odyssey Bookshop
Join Bruna Dantas Lobato and Andrea Lawlor as they discuss Dantas Lobato’s translation of Moldy Strawberries by Caio Fernando Abreu. Odyssey Bookshop will host their conversation virtually on June 14th at 7pm EST.
In Moldy Strawberries, Caio Fernando Abreu navigates a Brazil transformed by the AIDS epidemic and stifling military dictatorship of the ’80s. Suspended between fear and longing, Abreu’s characters grasp for connection. A man speckled with Carnival glitter crosses a crowded dance floor and seeks the warmth and beauty of another body. A budding office friendship between two young men grows into a “strange and secret harmony.” One man desires another but fears that their complot might crumble with one clumsy word or gesture. Junkies, failed revolutionaries, poets, and conflicted artists face threats at every turn. But, inwardly ferocious and resilient, they heal. For Abreu there is beauty on the horizon, mingled with the light of memory and decay.

Andrea Lawlor teaches writing at Mount Holyoke College, is the recipient of a 2020 Whiting Award for Fiction, and has been awarded fellowships by Lambda Literary and Radar Labs. Their publications include a chapbook, Position Papers (Factory Hollow Press, 2016), and a novel, Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl, a 2018 finalist for the Lambda Literary and CLMP Firecracker Awards.

Bruna Dantas Lobato received an MFA in Fiction from New York University and an MFA in Literary Translation from the University of Iowa. Her stories, essays, and translations from Portuguese have appeared or are forthcoming in The Kenyon ReviewHarvard ReviewA Public SpaceBOMBTwo Lines, and Massachusetts Review. She was a 2018 A Public Space Fellow, a 2019 PEN/Heim recipient, and a Yaddo resident.

Caio Fernando Abreu (1948-1996) was one of the most influential Brazilian writers of the 1970s and ’80s. The author of twenty books, including twelve story collections and two novels, he has been awarded major literary prizes, including the prestigious Jabuti Prize for Fiction a total of three times. During the military dictatorship in Brazil, his writing about queer erotic life was heavily censored. In 1994, while exiled in France, he tested HIV positive. He died two years later in his hometown.

Details

Date:
June 14, 2022
Time:
7:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Venue

Odyssey Bookshop
9 College Street
South Hadley, MA 01075 United States
Website:
https://www.odysseybks.com/