Wisconsin Book Festival Presents Catastrophizer, American Parable, & Useful Junk

About Catastrophizer: Adam Fell’s Catastrophizer is an ecopoetic indictment of America’s dereliction of environmental and humanitarian duty. Fell's poems seethe with the anger and glimmer with the hope and compassion of a new father, shattering language to evoke our shattered age of division, disinformation, self-destruction, and climate change. About American Parables: Daniel Khalastchi’s third collection provides an uncompromising exploration into the political and societal disturbances facing America today. Electioneering, lack of affordable health care, the increase in mass shootings, and the continued fight for equal rights are juxtaposed against an unlikely sense of hope and optimism. Lurking behind each page is the ever-present issue of immigration, with specific focus on the escape of the author’s father from Iraq and the pressures linked to living as an Arab Jew in the middle of the United States. Through unnerving gallows humor and radical honesty, these poems redefine the American experience by asking the reader to consider what it means to live in the shadow of a perceived sense of freedom and to have faith when believing feels hopeless. Khalastchi’s perspective as an Iraqi Jewish American brings sharp focus to the holistic uncertainties of religion, politics, assimilation, illness, love, and loss—with absurd, visceral, and wry acclaim. About Useful Junk: Useful Junk is an epistemological exploration of how the body sees and is seen. These poems, made up of our most intimate moments, serve as meditations on the ways technology reframes memory and self-image, reminding us that pleasure is a vital form of knowledge, and that desire—at the root of so many of our embodied experiences—keeps us alive. The Wisconsin Book Festival is hosted by Madison Public Library in partnership with the Madison Public Library Foundation. Festival sponsors make this event possible through their private support. We’d like to thank our Wisconsin Book Festival sponsors for their generosity and dedication to the sharing of ideas. https://www.wisconsinbookfestival.org...