Ghost Stories & Flower Bearers: Mapping the Geographies of Grief

How do we render visible the echo of a voice, the love that remains, and the imprint of a life that continues to shape our own?

Join acclaimed authors Rachel Eliza Griffiths and Siri Hustvedt for an intimate, cross-disciplinary conversation on the architecture of memory and the creative force that transforms loss into meaning. Moderated by Juliane Camfield, Director of Deutsches Haus at NYU, this evening brings together two of contemporary literature's most profound voices to discuss their 2026 memoirs: Hustvedt’s Ghost Stories, a luminous reflection on her forty-three-year partnership with the late Paul Auster, and Griffiths’ The Flower Bearers, a visceral exploration of sisterhood, survival, and the ancestral past.

Taking place at the historic Society of Illustrators, the discussion will lean into the authors' shared history with the visual arts: Hustvedt as a renowned art critic and Griffiths as a photographer and painter. Together, they will explore the "visual echo": how we use imagery, both literal and literary, not only to navigate the geography of mourning but also, to illuminate connection, continuity, and care. It is a conversation about the art of writing the people we love back into existence and the power of the creative act to bridge the gap between the seen and the unseen.

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Siri Hustvedt is the author of a book of poetry, six essay collections, seven novels, including The Blazing World and Memories of the Future, and several works of nonfiction, including the upcoming Ghost Stories, to be published in May 2026. Hustvedt has a PhD from Columbia University in English Literature and an appointment as a lecturer in psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College. The Blazing World was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize and won The Los Angeles Book Prize for Fiction. She has been awarded the International Gabarron Prize for Thought and Humanities, the Prix européen de l’essai from the Foundation Charles Veillon, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature, and the Princess of Asturias Award in Spain. Her work has been translated into over thirty languages. Hustvedt lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Rachel Eliza Griffiths is a poet, visual artist, and novelist. She is the recipient of the Hurston/Wright Foundation Legacy Award, the Paterson Poetry Prize, and a finalist for the NAACP Image Award. Griffiths is also a recipient of many fellowships, including Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, and Yaddo. Her work has been published in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and many others. Her debut novel, Promise, was a Kirkus Reviews and Chicago Public Library Best Book of the Year. Her highly acclaimed memoir, The Flower Bearers, was published in 2026.Griffiths lives in New York City.

Juliane Camfield is the director of Deutsches Haus at NYU, one of the United States' leading institutions for the culture and language of the German-speaking world. She joined Deutsches Haus at NYU in 2013 as cultural program coordinator and became its director in 2014. Camfield served as program curator at the Goethe-Institut New York from 2001 until 2012, and worked at The Museum of Modern Art's Department of Film in New York from 1997 until 2000. She serves on the U.S. jury of New Books in German and is a fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities. She has served as a juror for a number of film festivals and awards, including the Student Academy Awards, and as an advisor to several arts organizations, among them the MacDowell Colony and The Fassbinder Foundation New York, where she continues to be a member of the board. Camfield studied at Freie Universität Berlin and the University of California, Berkeley, and holds an M.A. in North American Studies and Theater/Film Studies.

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