City Lights and Litquake celebrate John Freeman’s final issue of “Freeman’s” journal

Freeman’s: Conclusions

published by Grove Atlantic

With John Freeman and friends (TBA)

This event is part of the Litquake 2023 Festival. To learn more visit: https://www.litquake.org/

Over the course of ten years, Freeman’s has introduced the English-speaking world to countless writers of international import and acclaim, from Olga Tokarczuk to Valeria Luiselli, while also spotlighting brilliant writers working in English, from Tommy Orange to Tess Gunty. Now, in its last issue, this unique literary project ponders all the ways of reaching a fitting conclusion.

For Sayaka Murata, keeping up with the comings and goings of fashion and its changing emotional landscapes can mean being left behind, and in her poem “Amenorrhea,” Julia Alvarez experiences the end of the line as menopause takes hold. Yet sometimes an end is merely a beginning, as Barry Lopez meditates while walking through the snowy Oregonian landscapes. While Chinelo Okparanta’s story “Fatu” confronts the end of a relationship under the specter of new life, other writers look towards aging as an opportunity for rebirth, such as Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, who takes on the role of being her own elder, comforting herself in the ways that her grandmother used to. Finally, in his comic story “Everyone at Dinner Has a Max von Sydow Story,” Dave Eggers suggests that sometimes stories don’t have neat or clean endings—that sometimes the middle is enough.

With new writing from Sandra Cisneros, Colum McCann, Omar El Akkad, and Mieko Kawakami, Freeman’s: Conclusions is a testament to the startling power of literature to conclude in a state of beauty, fear, and promise.

John Freeman is the founder of the literary annual Freeman’s and the author and editor of ten books, including Dictionary of the Undoing, The Park, Tales of Two Planets, The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story, and, with Tracy K. Smith, There’s a Revolution Outside, My Love. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Orion, and been translated into over twenty languages. The former editor of Granta, he lives in New York City, where he teaches writing at NYU and is an executive editor at Alfred A. Knopf.

This event is made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation. To learn more visit: https://citylights.com/foundation/