Allegiance: Art, Love, and Migration
Three books—a novel, a graphic memoir, and a poetry collection—that grapple with questions of who to love, national identity, class divides, loneliness in an unknown place. In the 1920s, a young refugee from the Soviet Union finds herself embroiled in the art and marriage of a brilliant writer and his wife in Adrienne Celt’s novel Invitation to a Bonfire. Wendy Chen’s Unearthings, the fourth selection in Tavern Books’ Wrolstad Contemporary Poetry Series, explores Chen’s identity as an Asian-American woman and the complexities of cultural, ancestral, and familial inheritance. Ali Fitzgerald’s graphic memoir Drawn to Berlin: Comic Workshops in Refugee Shelters and Other Stories from a New Europe depicts her decade in Germany, entwining political and personal displacement as she explores loss, community, and the way art can bring people together. Moderated by Sarah Bowlin.
Advance 2018 Portland Book Festival passes available now.
Adrienne Celt
Adrienne Celt is the winner of a 2016 O. Henry Prize, and the author of the 2015 novel The Daughters. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in Esquire, The Kenyon Review, Zyzzyva, Tin House, Electric Literature, Literary Hub, and more. As a cartoonist, her comics have been published by The Rumpus, The Toast, and others, as well as on her weekly webcomic loveamongthelampreys.com. She lives in Tucson. Find her online at adriennecelt.com.
