Quarantine Session #98: Grace Lavery + Elif Batuman

Summary

Greenlight welcomed author, scholar, and activist Grace Lavery to our (virtual) stage for the launch of Please Miss: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Penis—a “memoir” like nothing you’ve ever read before. Part literary theory, part musical theater parody, part feminist sci-fi reboot, Please Miss was hailed by author Torrey Peters (Detransition, Baby) as a “can’t-look-away performance of wit, language, irreverence, and delight”, and by Carmen Maria Machado (In the Dream House) as “the queer memoir you’ve been waiting for; a dizzying mix of theory and pastiche, metafiction and memory… hilarious and sexy and terrifying in its brilliance.” In a scintillating conversation with Elif Batuman (The Idiot) that covered everything from finding one’s voice through the process of transitioning to gendered roots of the word memoir, Lavery graced us with her singular brilliance. (Recorded February 9, 2022)