UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Elizabeth Kadetsky, Penn State associate professor of fiction and nonfiction and an award-winning author, will read from her works as part of the Mary E. Rolling Reading Series.
The reading, which is free and open to the public, will take place at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 4, in Paterno Library’s Foster Auditorium. The in-person event will also be livestreamed; those interested in attending virtually must register in advance.
A two-time Fulbright scholar to India and a 30-year practitioner of Iyengar and Ashtanga yoga, Kadetsky published her first book, the memoir “First There is a Mountain” (2004), after researching and studying with the yogi BKS Iyengar in Pune, India. She also has published the novella “On the Island at the Center of the Center of the World” (Nouvella, 2015) and the short story collection “The Poison That Purifies You” (C&R Press, 2014). Her short stories have been chosen for a Pushcart Prize, Best New American Voices, and two Best American Short Stories notable citations, and her personal essays have appeared in The New York Times, Santa Monica Review, Antioch Review, and elsewhere.
Kadetsky’s most recent book, “The Memory Eaters,” a lyric memoir from the University of Massachusetts Press (2020), earned her the Juniper Prize in Creative Nonfiction. A memoir-in-essays, “The Memory Eaters” illuminates Kadetsky’s battles with her mother's Alzheimer's disease, her sister's addiction, and her family’s secrets. It was named among the “great books from small presses to read now” by Buzzfeed when it was released near the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in April 2020, and was featured in The Boston Globe, The Rumpus, She Reads, and elsewhere. The book’s epigraph offers a verse from “The Odyssey,” wherein Homer’s Lotus Eaters lapse into forgetfulness after eating the addictive fruit, a state the book’s title echoes.
“‘The Memory Eaters’ functions as love letters to single mothers, to New York City of the '70s and '80s, to the fashion industry, to graffiti artists, and to Kadetsky's own mother, of course,” notes reviewer Jeff Parker. Author Paisley Rekdal commends the way “Kadetsky’s nuanced essays explore the complicated contradictions inherent to memory, how memory holds us captive to our familial wounds, while at the same time helping us preserve the stories, and presences, of those we love.”
In addition to her teaching and writing, Kadetsky serves as a nonfiction editor at the New England Review.
The Mary E. Rolling Reading Series is a program offered by Penn State’s Creative Writing Program in English. The series receives generous support from the College of the Liberal Arts; the Department of English; the Joseph L. Grucci Poetry Endowment; the Mary E. Rolling Lectureship in Creative Writing; and University Libraries. A full list of readings in the 2021-22 series, as well as links to livestreams and virtual events, can be found at creativewriting.psu.edu.