Chance Meetings Session 8: Rachel Cohen—A Conclusion

The Authors Guild Foundation presents Chance Meetings, a new online literary seminar inspired by Rachel Cohen’s A Chance Meeting: American Encounters (NYRB Classics 2024). 

Following the book’s spirit and shape, the monthly sessions feature talks on beloved classics of American literature by contemporary writers with a personal connection to the works they are discussing. 

In the eighth and final session on December 11, Rachel Cohen will extend the lines of the seminars forward, watching new art forms emerge after the first World War, and considering Carl Van Vechten’s photographs of the leading lights of modernism and the Harlem Renaissance, including Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Gertrude Stein. In the turbulent 1960s, we will be able to see Marianne Moore’s friendship with Elizabeth Bishop, and the effect of the Civil Rights era on James Baldwin’s encounters with Beauford Delaney, Richard Avedon, and Norman Mailer. From this concluding vantage, participants will be able to look back at a rich tapestry from this first season of the Chance Meetings seminars. 

This event takes place virtually via Zoom. Tickets are required for attendance.