Miranda Mellis presents "Crocosmia" in conversation w/ Alicia Puglionesi
Schedule
Wed Nov 12 2025 at 07:00 pm to 08:30 pm
UTC-05:00Location
3128 Greenmount Avenue, Baltimore, MD, United States, Maryland 21218 | Baltimore, MD
A revelatory novel (or parable) of art, adventure, and a radical politics, set in a world on the precipice.A philosophical fable, CROCOSMIA centers on Maya as she recollects the "great turning"—a moment of radical social and ecological change effected by her mother, Jane's, art. As Maya recalls her upbringing--from a commune run by anarchist nuns to a time of rural isolation before her mother's disappearance—Mellis's prose gorgeously conjures a life defined by revolutionary thought and action and the interplay and tension between family life and political commitment. At once a fantasy, a handbook to political thought, and a work of eco-fiction, this lush novel meditates on how, in a world on the precipice, dreams of communal care can bloom.
Miranda Mellis is the author of DEMYSTIFICATIONS (2021); THE INSTEAD (2016); THE SPOKES (2012); NONE OF THIS IS REAL (2012); and THE REVISIONIST (2007). Her stories, poems, and essays have appeared in various publications including Harper’s, The Believer, BOMB, The New York Times, and elsewhere. She has been an artist-in-residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, and Millay Colony. She received the John Hawkes Prize in Fiction, the Michael S. Harper Praxis Prize, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. She grew up in San Francisco and now lives in Olympia, Washington.
Alicia Puglionesi is a lecturer in the Medicine, Science, and the Humanities program at JHU. She holds a PhD in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, and is the author of two books, COMMON PHANTOMS (2020) and IN WHOSE RUINS (2022), that concern relationships between spiritual belief and scientific knowledge. She teaches on health politics, the political economy of care, and health and science in popular literary genres.
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