At What Cost: Sleep
About this Event
Sleep is the banal mystery of our lives. It’s moral, it’s personal, it’s a solitary portal (we can never enter it ‘with’ someone), and yet we are all there. It’s where we forget, remember, double down, let go, hypnotic in its mundane recollection. We want to know. We want to know we’ll fall asleep. Can or can’t you, and whose fault is it? Which parts of you never rest and which are never woken? If Erich Fromm, from the Art of Loving, tells us “it takes faith to fall asleep,” At What Cost suggests it takes trust to wake up. Explore these questions and more as Jessica Scicchitano brings together writers Caren Beilin, Katie Bennett, and Stella Corso in this latest edition of At What Cost, a reading series and curatorial project that examines the toll our avoidance takes.
About the Contributors:
Caren Beilin is the author of the novel Sea, Poison (New Directions, 2025), longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction and the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction. Her previous books include Revenge of the Scapegoat (Dorothy, 2022)—winner of the Vermont Book Award for Fiction—Blackfishing the IUD (Wolfman Books, 2019), Spain (Rescue Press, 2018), The University of Pennsylvania (Noemi Press, 2014), and the chapbook Americans, Guests, or Us (Diagram/New Michigan Press, 2012). Some of these titles have been published abroad with Scribner (UK), The Last Books (Amsterdam), and los tres editores (Madrid). She lives in Cleveland where she is Fiction Editor for Cleveland Review of Books and an Associate Professor at Case Western Reserve University.
Katie Bennett is a writer based in Philadelphia. Her first book, She Was Wild Grass, will be released by Brink Books in September 2026.
Stella Corso wrote the poetry collections Green Knife (2023) and Tantrum (selected by Douglas Kearney for the 2016 Black Box Prize), both from Rescue Press, as well as several chapbooks including DEEPFAKES (mercury firs, 2026), the people were lovely, but I was not (Bateau Press, 2025), Taboo Vivant (blush lit, 2022), and Wind & the Augur (Sixth Finch, 2021). Recent fiction appears or is forthcoming in Annulet, swamp pink, Bombay Gin, and as an online exclusive for The Colby Review. She currently lives in New Orleans.
Jessica Scicchitano is a writer and the creator of , a reading series and curatorial project that centers inquiry, approachability, and remarkable art. Jessica received her MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University, and her poetry can be found in publications such as Prelude and Sixth Finch. After a decade-long break in writing, the series brings together creatives to explore a burning question or idea in order to confront the cost of our avoidance.
Where is it happening?
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
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