Author Event: An Evening with Joseph Earl Thomas

Literary realism may be the dominant mode of literary representation; but does it still have teeth? Does its very ubiquity sap it of its potency as a mode of social critique? In his debut novel (Hachette), BISR faculty Joseph Earl Thomas “plays with and departs from” the conventions of literary realism to tell the story of Joseph Thomas, Iraq War vet, doctoral student, and EMS worker, whose employment in a North Philadelphia hospital brings him closely into touch with the everyday brutalities of contemporary urban Black life. Blending realism, surrealism, and autofiction, God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer charts a new attempt to articulate “vernacular understandings” of the sociopolitical structures that shape the lives of its fictional characters. But what does it mean to represent social reality in the 21st-century United States? Can realism—or any literary form—still be wielded to confront, rather than comfort, power and the status quo?

Join us, Thursday, July 18th, at Liz’s Book Bar (315 Smith Street, Brooklyn), as we take the occasion of the publication of God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer to examine how and why we represent social reality now. With Joseph Earl Thomas, fellow faculty Paige Sweet, and novelists Vinson Cunningham () and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (), we will ask: What does literary realism look like in the 21st century? How do the social and political concerns of contemporary life shape and motivate our forms of aesthetic representation? How does Blackness operate as both a space of imagination and subjection? What does realism look like, written from the margins? In capitalist life, can difference and dissent ever go un-commodified?

Copies of God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer, Great Expectations, and Chain Gang All Stars will be available for purchase at Liz’s Book Bar before and after the event.

Host or Publisher Liz’s Book Bar