Liberties There's nothing Artificial about our Intelligence

This month: We’re very excited to continue our wonderful discussions with all of you—April’s salon will be on the topic “Is curiosity dangerous?” This month: We will start our discussion at 7:30. As always: If you would like to prepare an opening statement, please let Chris and Celeste know ahead of time. As always: We will procure pizza so that we are all well fed before the hard work of conversation begins in earnest. This month: Since April 22 will be a school night, we will retire to a nearby venue to continue indulging our curiosity about one another after we record. As always: Please take the painful weeks of waiting until we meet to meditate on the topic, prepare your thoughts, form judgments and find sources to enliven our discussion. We look forward to seeing you all soon.

The N.Y.C. Salon is a discussion hosted quarterly in New York City by Liberties Journal and the Washington Review of Books. This is part of an ongoing series organized in Washington, D.C. by Celeste Marcus and Chris McCaffery; popular demand has brought us north to Manhattan. In a few weeks, we very much hope you can join us for a wide-ranging discussion on our topic for April: “Is curiosity dangerous?” Please join us in discussion; we would like to know what you think. We’ll be gathering at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, April 25th, graciously hosted by Ami Dar in the Idealist offices: We will procure pizza and provide a variety of beverages so that we are all well-fed before the hard work of conversation begins in earnest. After the discussion, we hope you can stick around and continue arguing and socializing as you see fit.

The WRB Presents the next in a regular series of readings attracting and spotlighting literary talent in Washington, D.C., hosted by Michael Barron, Lauren Cerand, and Chris McCaffery. On the evening of May 7, these four writers will read from their work: Carlo Massimo, a poet, translator from Italian and French, and journalist. He has translated poetry by filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini and the Tunisian poet Mario Scalesi, and his translation of Salvatore Mugno’s “The Columbus of Jazz” comes out this fall from Bordighera Press. He also translates and reviews Italian and German YA fiction for the publishing firm Levine Querido. Molly McCloskey, who was born in Philadelphia and grew up in North Carolina and Oregon. She lived in Ireland for 25 years and now resides in Washington, D.C. She is the author of two short story collections, Solomon’s Seal and The Beautiful Changes, and a novel, Protection. Her first work of nonfiction, Circles Around the Sun: In Search of a Lost Brother, appeared in 2011. Her latest novel, Straying (2018), is published in the US by Scribner and by Penguin in the U.K. and Ireland, where it appeared as When Light is Like Water. Her work has appeared in the The New Yorker, the Irish Times, the Dublin Review, the Guardian, McSweeney’s, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. Kelly Sather, whose debut story collection Small in Real Life was selected by Deesha Philyaw for the 2023 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. The book invokes the myth and melancholy of L.A. glamour, of starry-eyed women and men striving for their own Hollywood shimmer no matter the consequences. Sather's stories and interviews have appeared in publications including Santa Monica Review, Pembroke Magazine, J Journal, PANK, and on ZYZZYVA, and she has an MFA from Bennington. Ena Selimović, a Yugoslav-born writer and co-founder of Turkoslavia, a translation collective and journal. Her work has appeared in the Periodical of the Modern Language Association, Words Without Borders, Los Angeles Review of Books, World Literature Today, and the Paris Review, among others, and has received support from the American Literary Translators Association, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Washington University in St. Louis. Her translation of Underground Barbieby Maša Kolanović was published by Sandorf Passage in January.