What drives creativity? Explore with author Stephanie Elizondo Griest.
What drives artists to place creativity at the core of their existence? Is it a compulsion, a calling, or a stab at immortality? In her new memoir Art Above Everything, Stephanie Elizondo Griest weaves the sacrifices she has personally made for her books into the narratives of scores of other women she has interviewed around the world, from a classical dancer in India to a playwright in Rwanda. Griest reveals how a cancer diagnosis at age 43 radically shifted her own perspective. Join us for a multi-media presentation about global women artists followed by a frank discussion of the joys and torments of the creative life.
About the Author:
Stephanie Elizondo Griest is a globetrotting author from the Texas/Mexico borderlands. Her six books include Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana; Mexican Enough; All the Agents and Saints; and Art Above Everything: One Woman’s Global Exploration of the Joys and Torments of a Creative Life. She has also written for the New York Times, Washington Post, VQR, The Believer, BBC, Orion, and Oxford American. Her work has been supported by the Lannan Foundation, Henry Luce Foundation, Princeton University, and the Institute for Arts and Humanities, and she has won a Margolis Award, an International Latino Book Award, a PEN Southwest Book Award, and two Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism prizes. Currently Professor of Creative Nonfiction at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Elizondo Griest has performed in capacities ranging from a Moth storyteller to a literary ambassador for the U.S. State Department. Wanderlust has led her to 50 countries and 49 states. Her hardest journey was to Planet Cancer in 2017, but she’s officially in remission now. She recently endowed Testimonios Fronterizos, a research grant for student journalists from the borderlands enrolled at her alma mater, the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Journalism.
Questions? Contact lizg@deschuteslibrary.org
AGE GROUP: | Adult |
EVENT TYPE: | Adult Program |
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