Tues 12/1 @ 6:00PM
Labyrinth Books, 122 Nassau Street

MacArthur recipient Aleksandar Hemon reads from his first collection of poetry. Godspotting embraces mortality and survival in the face of global conflict and domestic threat.

Godspotting ponders and proclaims what it means to live, die, and survive in a world that “doesn’t love any of us.” Considering the fragility and utterly complicated nature of life, Aleksandar Hemon’s deep contemplation of human mortality shifts between surrendering to the disappearing act of death and accepting that this cruel world is still home to beautiful things. Hemon acknowledges the difficulty of living in the present as he interrogates the “shape and form” of joy, meandering through tender and complex memories of family members, his childhood and youth, and valued moments that must end. This collection challenges typically religious understandings of death and what follows, as it teeters from curiosity to radical acceptance to despair at one’s inevitable demise.

Aleksandar Hemon has written poetry, nonfiction, short story collections, and novels, most recently The World and All That It Holds. His earlier novel The Lazarus Project, was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award. Other notable works include his autobiography The Book of My Lives, a finalist for the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award; the short story collection Love & Obstacles; and The Nowhere Man, also shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Born in Sarajevo, Hemon visited Chicago in 1992, intending a brief visit, but while there, Sarajevo came under siege, and he was unable to return home. He started writing shortly thereafter and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2003 and a genius grant from the MacArthur Foundation in 2004. Hemon now lives in New Jersey where he teaches creative writing at Princeton University. He performs music as Cielo Hemon.

This event is co-sponsored by Princeton University's Program in Creative Writing and Labyrinth Books.