Subverted Authorities: An Examination of Hybrid Forms

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On Monday, November 8th, the Lewiston Public Library will host poet and archivist Jefferson Navicky and writer and editor Claire Guyton for a discussion on hybrid forms of writing. This free, public program will take place from 6 – 7 PM virtually on Zoom and streamed to the Library’s Facebook page.

Prose poems and flash fiction sit close to one another in the world of literary genre, both difficult to categorize. Like outsiders at a family reunion, they draw attention and confused looks from the more established literary families. What defines these hybrid forms, and why are some writers drawn to them? What can writers accomplish with a prose poem or flash fiction that can’t be done in more traditional poetry and short stories? Why write in the margins of genre?

Join us as writers Jefferson Navicky & Claire Guyton attempt to answer these questions and read examples from their own work, including from Jefferson’s new book Antique Densities: Modern Parables & Other Experiments in Short Prose.

Jefferson Navicky is the author of Antique Densities: Modern Parables & Other Experiments in Short Prose, as well as the poetic novel, The Book of Transparencies, and the story collection, The Paper Coast. He has been awarded a Maine Arts Commission grant, two Maine Literary Awards, and was the 2019 winner of the Maine Postmark Poetry Contest. He is the archivist for the Maine Women Writers Collection.

Claire Guyton has been a Maine Arts Commission Literary Fellow and twice a finalist for the Maine Literary Award, and her work has been selected for the Best Small Fictions anthology and nominated for a Pushcart. Her short fiction appears in numerous journals, as well as in the Maine anthology Summer Stories. She is the co-founder and co-editor of Waterwheel Review, and the co-founder and co-organizer of the reading series Local Writers Read. She works in Inter-Library Loan at the Lewiston Public Library.

For more information, contact the LPL Adult & Teen Services desk at 513-3135 or LPLReference@LewistonMaine.gov.