Don't Play with that Girl

I will be reading from my essay 'Don't Play with that Girl' and be in conversation with writers Lauren Elkin, Xiaolu Guo, Therese Henningsen to discuss the art, philosophy and politics of encounter, on the page and screen.

"'I am sure, now, that we learn even more about ourselves when we go out into the world than in the introspection of the private diary.' (Annie Ernaux in Journal de Dehors)

Strangers Within (Prototype, 2022) is an anthology exploring the idea of documentary as encounter through essays, stories, interviews and other creative responses by filmmakers, artists and writers.

For this event we have invited Xiaolu Guo, Andrea Luka Zimmerman, Lauren Elkin and the book's co-editor Therese Henningsen, to reflect on the themes of the anthology in relation to their own work. Taking a cue from Nobel prize winning author Annie Ernaux’s diaristic encounters, they will discuss ways in which writers and filmmakers ‘document’ and record other people’s lives."