Swedish-US American author and SKB-member/teacher Alvina Chamberland will be having an online reading from her English-language novel Love the World or Get Killed Trying and doing a Q&A about the writing process and themes of the novel.
Time and date: 19th December, 19.00-20.30
Place: ZOOM – meeting URL: https://tu-berlin.zoom.us/j/6482888899?pwd=SWpPN2JndzlLaG80cU9aUEZpZ1dkUT09
More about the novel and Alvina:
Through playful poetic prose, sharp social commentary and self-deprecating gallows humor Love the World or Get Killed Trying dives into the mind of Alvina, a trans woman on the eve of turning 30. The reader is invited to follow her journey through the breathtaking wilderness of Iceland and busy city boulevards of Berlin and Paris as she probes questions of eternity, sexuality, longing, death, love, and how hard it is to remain soft when you’re a ceaseless target of straight men’s secret lust and open disgust. This novel tackles universal issues through a trans woman’s specific lens – insisting on these experiences speaking to far more than just issues of sexuality and gender.
Reaching its climax through an urgent wildfire scream-of-consciousness, cry-of-love-manifesto, Love the World or Get Killed Trying is a raw and vulnerable work of magical brutalist autofiction; abstract in the sense of poetically digging beneath the surface, and experimental in the sense of trying to find out new things and express them in new ways, while concretely asserting that if trans women one day collectively outed every man who seeks them out, a full-blown revolution would ensue by nightfall.
More info in this interview in Vogue: https://www.vogue.com/article/alvina-chamberland-love-the-world-or-get-killed-trying-interview
If you wish to buy the book in advance, it is available in many Berlin bookstores including Dussmann, Shakespeare and Sons, Ivallans Books, BuchBund, Ocelot, Autoren Buchhandlung, and She Said. It can also be ordered online via either the publisher or Amazon:
https://www.hetmoet.com/product-page/love-the-world-or-get-killed-trying-alvina-chamberland
https://www.amazon.de/Love-World-Get-Killed-Trying/dp/9083384136
Alvina Chamberland is a Swedish-US American author of predominantly literary autofiction novels, residing between Athens and Berlin. Love the World or Get Killed Trying (2024) is her English language debut novel.