July 14, 2021

Kristen Radtke

Harvard Book Store's virtual event series welcomes writer and illustrator KRISTEN RADTKE—author of the acclaimed graphic memoir Imagine Wanting Only This—for a discussion of her latest book, Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness. She will be joined in conversation by NINA MACLAUGHLIN, author of Hammer Head: The Making of a Carpenter and Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung

Details

There is a silent epidemic in America: loneliness. Shameful to talk about and often misunderstood, loneliness is everywhere, from the most major of metropolises to the smallest of towns.

In Seek You, Kristen Radtke's wide-ranging exploration of our inner lives and public selves, Radtke digs into the ways in which we attempt to feel closer to one another, and the distance that remains. Through the lenses of gender and violence, technology and art, Radtke ushers us through a history of loneliness and longing, and shares what feels impossible to share.

Ranging from the invention of the laugh-track to the rise of Instagram, the bootstrap-pulling cowboy to the brutal experiments of Harry Harlow, Radtke investigates why we engage with each other, and what we risk when we turn away. With her distinctive, emotionally-charged drawings and deeply empathetic prose, Kristen Radtke masterfully shines a light on some of our most vulnerable and sublime moments, and asks how we might keep the spaces between us from splitting entirely.

About Author(s)

Kristen Radtke is the author of the graphic nonfiction book Imagine Wanting Only This. The recipient of a 2019 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant, Radtke is the art director and deputy publisher of The Believer. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Marie Claire, The Atlantic, The Guardian, GQ, Vogue, and Oxford American, among many other publications.

Nina MacLaughlin is the author of Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung (FSG/FSG Originals), a re-telling of Ovid's Metamorphoses told from the perspective of the female figures transformed, as well as Summer Solstice: An Essay (Black Sparrow). Her first book was the acclaimed memoir Hammer Head: The Making of a Carpenter (W.W. Norton). Formerly an editor at the Boston Phoenix, she worked for nine years as a carpenter, and is now a books columnist for the Boston Globe. Her work has appeared on or in The Paris Review DailyThe BelieverAgniAmerican Short Fiction, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Wall Street JournalMeatpaper, and elsewhere. She carves spoons and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.