READING | THURSDAY, OCTOBER 22 | 7 PM | FREE
UNM Creative Writing Program presents Molly Beer
Part of the Russo Reading Series
The UNM Creative Writing Program invites you to join them at FUSION | The Cell on October 22 at 7 PM for a reading by Molly Beer, author of Angelica: For Love and Country in a Time of Revolution. After the reading, Beer will give a brief audience Q&A. Books will be available for purchase!
ABOUT ANGELICA: FOR LOVE AND COUNTRY IN A TIME OF REVOLUTION
A women-centric view of revolution through the life of Angelica Schuyler Church, Alexander Hamilton’s influential sister-in-law.
Few women of the American Revolution have come through 250 years of US history with such clarity and color as Angelica Schuyler Church. She was Alexander Hamilton’s “saucy” sister-in-law, and the heart of Thomas Jefferson’s “charming coterie” of artists and salonnières in Paris. Her transatlantic network of important friends spanned the political spectrum of her time and place, and her astute eye and brilliant letters kept them well informed.
A woman of great influence in a time of influential women (Catherine the Great and Marie-Antoinette were contemporaries), Angelica was at the red-hot center of American history at its birth: in Boston, when General Burgoyne surrendered to the revolutionaries; in Newport, receiving French troops under the command of her soon-to-be dear friend Marquis de Lafayette; in Yorktown, just after the decisive battle; in Paris and London, helping to determine the standing of the new nation on the world stage.
She was born as Engeltje, a Dutch-speaking, slave-owning colonial girl who witnessed the Stamp Act riots in the Royal British Province of New York. She came of age under English rule as Angelica, the eldest daughter of the most important family on the northern part of Hudson’s River, raised to be a domestic diplomat responsible for hosting indigenous chiefs and enemy British generals at dinner. She was Madame Church, wife of a privateer turned merchant banker, whose London house was a refuge for veterans of the American war fleeing the guillotine in France. Across nationalities, languages, and cultures, across the divides of war, grievance, and geography, Angelica wove a web of soft-power connections that spanned the War for Independence, the post-war years of tenuous peace, and the turbulent politics and rival ideologies that threatened to tear apart the nascent United States
In this enthralling and revealing woman’s-eye view of a revolutionary era, Molly Beer breathes vibrant new life into a period usually dominated by masculine themes and often dulled by familiarity. In telling Angelica’s story, she illuminates how American women have always plied influence and networks for political ends, including the making of a new nation.
This event is free and open to all!
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ABOUT MOLLY BEER
Molly Beer’s work as a writer and international teacher led her to Europe, Asia, Central and South America, and elsewhere. But her debut book is a homecoming, both to the U.S. and to her rural American hometown of Angelica, New York.
By researching and writing the life and experiences of the ambitious, charismatic Angelica Schuyler Church, who inspired much more than her town’s name, Molly Beer set out to tell the U.S. origin story from the perspective of a woman situated at the heart of the American Revolution and the founding era.
Angelica joins Molly Beer’s body of award-winning nonfiction that grapples with the politics of place, from travel and the environment to women’s history. She has served as an Olive B. O’Connor Fellow in Creative Writing at Colgate University and currently teaches at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
UNM’S ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
UNM’s English Department offers a full array of creative writing workshops in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction on the undergraduate and graduate levels.
Undergraduate students may register for introductory, intermediate, and advanced workshops in all three genres. Additionally, they are invited to attend readings sponsored by UNM’s Masters of Fine Arts Program and participate as readers on Blue Mesa Review. Qualifying undergraduates interested in pursuing creative writing on the graduate level are encouraged to work with a faculty mentor on a creative writing Honors Thesis. And every fall undergraduate creative writers compete for the prestigious Lena Todd Awards, a small cash stipend and the opportunity to share their work at the Works-in-Process Reading Series.
UNM’s MFA Program in Creative Writing is designed for graduate students committed to pursuing the writing life. This three-year degree combines studio-based workshops in fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction with craft seminars and coursework in literature, teaching pedagogy, and professional writing.
Quality bar service provided by Safe House Distilling Co. and Teller Genuine Vodka.
