Join us for a reading and presentation by Steffani Jemison, which will cover her first novel, A Rock, A River, A Street (Primary Information, 2022) and other work including her writing journals and the essay “Wind Bag” (2022). She will also share an excerpt from the video Similitude (2019), which preceded the novel and anticipates some of its imagery and themes.

Schedule
17:00-19:00 Presentation by Steffani Jemison

About A Rock, A River, A Street
An experimental novella about the bounds of the self and the many forms of embodied expression.

Where does your body end and the world begin? How do you locate the limit between your self and others? A Rock, A River, A Street follows a young, Black woman who lives at the hazy border between Brooklyn and Queens in the not so distant present. As she rides the subway, walks around her neighborhood, visits the doctor, watches movies, attends dance class and tries to heal her body, we are brought into her conflicted relationship with language, as she recalls formative experiences from her childhood and absorbs the world around her. Acutely conscious of the soft, responsive nature of her physical self, and pushed and pulled by forces she cannot control, the narrator is vulnerable, terrifyingly open. Everything and everyone leaves an impression. Jemison moves deftly across narrative genres and styles in this novella, as she interrogates the boundedness of the self, the possibilities of plurality and the limits of performance.

You can find the book here. 

About Steffani Jemison
Steffani Jemison is an artist in Brooklyn, New York. Jemison has presented solo exhibitions and commissioned performances at JOAN Los Angeles, Greene Naftali, Mass MoCA, Jeu de Paume, CAPC Bordeaux, the Museum of Modern Art, LAXART, and other venues. Her work has been included in significant generational exhibitions, including Greater New York 2021 and the Whitney Biennial 2019. Her work is part of many permanent public collections, including the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum, Kadist, and the Stedelijk Museum. Jemison is the author of A Rock, A River, A Street (Primary Information, 2022). Her publishing project, Future Plan and Program, published books by Harold Mendez, Martine Syms, Jibade-Khalil Huffman, Jina Valentine, and Szu-Han Ho. With Quincy Flowers, she co-founded at Louis Place, a platform for writers.