Join us on Monday, January 8th at 7pm PT when we celebrate Margo Steines' memoir, Brutalities: A Love Story, with Amanda Montei at 9th Ave!
Masks Encouraged for In-Person Attendance
Or watch online/ Livestream at the link above
Praise for Brutalities
"Brutalities is electric with insight, riveted by its commitments--to love and bewilderment, to bearing witness--and utterly propulsive in its explorations of compulsion, tenderness, caregiving, and desire. Margo Steines sees the world fiercely and freshly, with a rapt and nuanced gaze utterly her own. Imagine journeying to the center of the earth, except the earth is a human body--full of wanting and haunting--and the journey is just harrowing and glorious enough to do justice to the work and wonder of being alive." - Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams and Make It Scream, Make It Burn
"Brutalities is a perfect book. Reading it felt like consuming something designed precisely for me and of course, I won't be alone in this--that is the genius of great works of art: they reach our deepest interiors by naming the unspoken ordinary, the things we fear seeing or being seen as. There is nothing ordinary about this book, however. It is a brainy, elegant, erotic, brutal, funny, hypnotic achievement by an author obsessed with the far reaches of what it means to live in a body, and how some kinds of love look like violence while others can be medicine. It has made a devotee of me; I'll read anything Margo Steines ever writes." - Melissa Febos, author of Girlhood and Body Work
"This book circles around the simple fact that each of us is capable of change. It does not matter where we've been or what we've done or what's been done to us, change is always possible. Margo Steines, through what some might call grace, has emerged from a (perhaps) chosen darkness, to focus all her wild energies into these pages. To get here she had to descend into realms you might find disturbing, but trust that if you descend with her (the trip is exhilarating) you too will emerge, also changed. This book is an amazing feat, Steines has crafted something truly lovely, and it's her writing that makes it sing." - Nick Flynn, author of This Is the Night Our House Will Catch Fire
About Brutalities
A searing, vivid memoir that investigates the dynamics of violence, power, desire, and a body pushed to the brink.
Quarantined in a southwestern desert city in the midst of her high-risk pregnancy, Margo Steines felt her life narrow around her growing body, compelling her to reckon with the violence entangled in its history. She was a professional dominatrix in New York City, a homestead farmer in a brutal relationship, a welder on a high-rise building crew, and a mixed martial arts enthusiast; each of her many lives brought a new perspective on how power and masculinity coalesce--and how far she could push her body toward the brink. With unflinching candor, Steines searches for the roots of her erstwhile attraction to pain while charting the complicated triumph of gentleness and love.
About Margo Steines
Margo Steines is a native New Yorker, a journeyman ironworker, and serves as mom to a wildly spirited small person. Margo is faculty at the University of Arizona Writing Program, and is a private creative coach and writing group facilitator. Her work was named Notable in Best American Essays and has appeared in The New York Times (Modern Love), The Sun, Brevity, the anthology Letter to a Stranger: Essays to the Ones Who Haunt Us, and elsewhere. She is the author of the memoir-in-essays Brutalities: A Love Story (Norton, 2023). Margo, who holds an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Arizona, lives and writes in Tucson.
About Amanda Montei
Amanda Montei is the author of TOUCHED OUT: Motherhood, Misogyny, Consent, & Control, available now from Beacon Press, as well as the memoir Two Memoirs (Jaded Ibis Press) and a collection of prose, The Failure Age (Bloof Books). Her work has been featured at The New York Times, The Guardian, ELLE, TIME, The Cut, Mother Tongue, Slate, Electric Literature, Vox, Rumpus, Salon, The Believer, Ms. Magazine, Poetry Foundation, and many others. She currently teaches creative writing at Stanford and has taught and presented work at Columbia University, New York University, University of California, Berkeley, University of Chicago, The Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, University of Virginia, State University of New York at Buffalo, and many other venues. She has also taught writing at Catapult, Corporeal Writing, Hugo House, Writing Workshops, and Write or Die. She holds an MFA in Writing from California Institute of the Arts and a PhD in English literature from SUNY at Buffalo. She runs the popular newsletter Mad Woman and lives in the East Bay.
Accessibility
The event is located on the ground level, and there are no stairs between the entrance and event space.
show less
Masks Encouraged for In-Person Attendance
Or watch online/ Livestream at the link above
Praise for Brutalities
"Brutalities is electric with insight, riveted by its commitments--to love and bewilderment, to bearing witness--and utterly propulsive in its explorations of compulsion, tenderness, caregiving, and desire. Margo Steines sees the world fiercely and freshly, with a rapt and nuanced gaze utterly her own. Imagine journeying to the center of the earth, except the earth is a human body--full of wanting and haunting--and the journey is just harrowing and glorious enough to do justice to the work and wonder of being alive." - Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams and Make It Scream, Make It Burn
"Brutalities is a perfect book. Reading it felt like consuming something designed precisely for me and of course, I won't be alone in this--that is the genius of great works of art: they reach our deepest interiors by naming the unspoken ordinary, the things we fear seeing or being seen as. There is nothing ordinary about this book, however. It is a brainy, elegant, erotic, brutal, funny, hypnotic achievement by an author obsessed with the far reaches of what it means to live in a body, and how some kinds of love look like violence while others can be medicine. It has made a devotee of me; I'll read anything Margo Steines ever writes." - Melissa Febos, author of Girlhood and Body Work
"This book circles around the simple fact that each of us is capable of change. It does not matter where we've been or what we've done or what's been done to us, change is always possible. Margo Steines, through what some might call grace, has emerged from a (perhaps) chosen darkness, to focus all her wild energies into these pages. To get here she had to descend into realms you might find disturbing, but trust that if you descend with her (the trip is exhilarating) you too will emerge, also changed. This book is an amazing feat, Steines has crafted something truly lovely, and it's her writing that makes it sing." - Nick Flynn, author of This Is the Night Our House Will Catch Fire
About Brutalities
A searing, vivid memoir that investigates the dynamics of violence, power, desire, and a body pushed to the brink.
Quarantined in a southwestern desert city in the midst of her high-risk pregnancy, Margo Steines felt her life narrow around her growing body, compelling her to reckon with the violence entangled in its history. She was a professional dominatrix in New York City, a homestead farmer in a brutal relationship, a welder on a high-rise building crew, and a mixed martial arts enthusiast; each of her many lives brought a new perspective on how power and masculinity coalesce--and how far she could push her body toward the brink. With unflinching candor, Steines searches for the roots of her erstwhile attraction to pain while charting the complicated triumph of gentleness and love.
About Margo Steines
Margo Steines is a native New Yorker, a journeyman ironworker, and serves as mom to a wildly spirited small person. Margo is faculty at the University of Arizona Writing Program, and is a private creative coach and writing group facilitator. Her work was named Notable in Best American Essays and has appeared in The New York Times (Modern Love), The Sun, Brevity, the anthology Letter to a Stranger: Essays to the Ones Who Haunt Us, and elsewhere. She is the author of the memoir-in-essays Brutalities: A Love Story (Norton, 2023). Margo, who holds an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Arizona, lives and writes in Tucson.
About Amanda Montei
Amanda Montei is the author of TOUCHED OUT: Motherhood, Misogyny, Consent, & Control, available now from Beacon Press, as well as the memoir Two Memoirs (Jaded Ibis Press) and a collection of prose, The Failure Age (Bloof Books). Her work has been featured at The New York Times, The Guardian, ELLE, TIME, The Cut, Mother Tongue, Slate, Electric Literature, Vox, Rumpus, Salon, The Believer, Ms. Magazine, Poetry Foundation, and many others. She currently teaches creative writing at Stanford and has taught and presented work at Columbia University, New York University, University of California, Berkeley, University of Chicago, The Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, University of Virginia, State University of New York at Buffalo, and many other venues. She has also taught writing at Catapult, Corporeal Writing, Hugo House, Writing Workshops, and Write or Die. She holds an MFA in Writing from California Institute of the Arts and a PhD in English literature from SUNY at Buffalo. She runs the popular newsletter Mad Woman and lives in the East Bay.
Accessibility
The event is located on the ground level, and there are no stairs between the entrance and event space.
Join us on Monday, January 8th at 7pm PT when we celebrate Margo Steines' memoir, Brutalities: A Love Story, with Amanda Montei at 9th Ave!
Masks Encouraged for In-Person Attendance
Or watch online/ Livestream at the link above
Praise for Brutalities
"Brutalities is electric with insight, riveted by its commitments--to love and bewilderment, to bearing witness--and utterly propulsive in its explorations of compulsion, tenderness, caregiving, and desire. Margo Steines sees the world fiercely and freshly, with a rapt and nuanced gaze utterly her own. Imagine journeying to the center of the earth, except the earth is a human body--full of wanting and haunting--and the journey is just harrowing and glorious enough to do justice to the work and wonder of being alive." - Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams and Make It Scream, Make It Burn
"Brutalities is a perfect book. Reading it felt like consuming something designed precisely for me and of course, I won't be alone in this--that is the genius of great works of art: they reach our deepest interiors by naming the unspoken ordinary, the things we fear seeing or being seen as. There is nothing ordinary about this book, however. It is a brainy, elegant, erotic, brutal, funny, hypnotic achievement by an author obsessed with the far reaches of what it means to live in a body, and how some kinds of love look like violence while others can be medicine. It has made a devotee of me; I'll read anything Margo Steines ever writes." - Melissa Febos, author of Girlhood and Body Work
"This book circles around the simple fact that each of us is capable of change. It does not matter where we've been or what we've done or what's been done to us, change is always possible. Margo Steines, through what some might call grace, has emerged from a (perhaps) chosen darkness, to focus all her wild energies into these pages. To get here she had to descend into realms you might find disturbing, but trust that if you descend with her (the trip is exhilarating) you too will emerge, also changed. This book is an amazing feat, Steines has crafted something truly lovely, and it's her writing that makes it sing." - Nick Flynn, author of This Is the Night Our House Will Catch Fire
About Brutalities
A searing, vivid memoir that investigates the dynamics of violence, power, desire, and a body pushed to the brink.
Quarantined in a southwestern desert city in the midst of her high-risk pregnancy, Margo Steines felt her life narrow around her growing body, compelling her to reckon with the violence entangled in its history. She was a professional dominatrix in New York City, a homestead farmer in a brutal relationship, a welder on a high-rise building crew, and a mixed martial arts enthusiast; each of her many lives brought a new perspective on how power and masculinity coalesce--and how far she could push her body toward the brink. With unflinching candor, Steines searches for the roots of her erstwhile attraction to pain while charting the complicated triumph of gentleness and love.
About Margo Steines
Margo Steines is a native New Yorker, a journeyman ironworker, and serves as mom to a wildly spirited small person. Margo is faculty at the University of Arizona Writing Program, and is a private creative coach and writing group facilitator. Her work was named Notable in Best American Essays and has appeared in The New York Times (Modern Love), The Sun, Brevity, the anthology Letter to a Stranger: Essays to the Ones Who Haunt Us, and elsewhere. She is the author of the memoir-in-essays Brutalities: A Love Story (Norton, 2023). Margo, who holds an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Arizona, lives and writes in Tucson.
About Amanda Montei
Amanda Montei is the author of TOUCHED OUT: Motherhood, Misogyny, Consent, & Control, available now from Beacon Press, as well as the memoir Two Memoirs (Jaded Ibis Press) and a collection of prose, The Failure Age (Bloof Books). Her work has been featured at The New York Times, The Guardian, ELLE, TIME, The Cut, Mother Tongue, Slate, Electric Literature, Vox, Rumpus, Salon, The Believer, Ms. Magazine, Poetry Foundation, and many others. She currently teaches creative writing at Stanford and has taught and presented work at Columbia University, New York University, University of California, Berkeley, University of Chicago, The Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, University of Virginia, State University of New York at Buffalo, and many other venues. She has also taught writing at Catapult, Corporeal Writing, Hugo House, Writing Workshops, and Write or Die. She holds an MFA in Writing from California Institute of the Arts and a PhD in English literature from SUNY at Buffalo. She runs the popular newsletter Mad Woman and lives in the East Bay.
Accessibility
The event is located on the ground level, and there are no stairs between the entrance and event space.
read more
Masks Encouraged for In-Person Attendance
Or watch online/ Livestream at the link above
Praise for Brutalities
"Brutalities is electric with insight, riveted by its commitments--to love and bewilderment, to bearing witness--and utterly propulsive in its explorations of compulsion, tenderness, caregiving, and desire. Margo Steines sees the world fiercely and freshly, with a rapt and nuanced gaze utterly her own. Imagine journeying to the center of the earth, except the earth is a human body--full of wanting and haunting--and the journey is just harrowing and glorious enough to do justice to the work and wonder of being alive." - Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams and Make It Scream, Make It Burn
"Brutalities is a perfect book. Reading it felt like consuming something designed precisely for me and of course, I won't be alone in this--that is the genius of great works of art: they reach our deepest interiors by naming the unspoken ordinary, the things we fear seeing or being seen as. There is nothing ordinary about this book, however. It is a brainy, elegant, erotic, brutal, funny, hypnotic achievement by an author obsessed with the far reaches of what it means to live in a body, and how some kinds of love look like violence while others can be medicine. It has made a devotee of me; I'll read anything Margo Steines ever writes." - Melissa Febos, author of Girlhood and Body Work
"This book circles around the simple fact that each of us is capable of change. It does not matter where we've been or what we've done or what's been done to us, change is always possible. Margo Steines, through what some might call grace, has emerged from a (perhaps) chosen darkness, to focus all her wild energies into these pages. To get here she had to descend into realms you might find disturbing, but trust that if you descend with her (the trip is exhilarating) you too will emerge, also changed. This book is an amazing feat, Steines has crafted something truly lovely, and it's her writing that makes it sing." - Nick Flynn, author of This Is the Night Our House Will Catch Fire
About Brutalities
A searing, vivid memoir that investigates the dynamics of violence, power, desire, and a body pushed to the brink.
Quarantined in a southwestern desert city in the midst of her high-risk pregnancy, Margo Steines felt her life narrow around her growing body, compelling her to reckon with the violence entangled in its history. She was a professional dominatrix in New York City, a homestead farmer in a brutal relationship, a welder on a high-rise building crew, and a mixed martial arts enthusiast; each of her many lives brought a new perspective on how power and masculinity coalesce--and how far she could push her body toward the brink. With unflinching candor, Steines searches for the roots of her erstwhile attraction to pain while charting the complicated triumph of gentleness and love.
About Margo Steines
Margo Steines is a native New Yorker, a journeyman ironworker, and serves as mom to a wildly spirited small person. Margo is faculty at the University of Arizona Writing Program, and is a private creative coach and writing group facilitator. Her work was named Notable in Best American Essays and has appeared in The New York Times (Modern Love), The Sun, Brevity, the anthology Letter to a Stranger: Essays to the Ones Who Haunt Us, and elsewhere. She is the author of the memoir-in-essays Brutalities: A Love Story (Norton, 2023). Margo, who holds an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Arizona, lives and writes in Tucson.
About Amanda Montei
Amanda Montei is the author of TOUCHED OUT: Motherhood, Misogyny, Consent, & Control, available now from Beacon Press, as well as the memoir Two Memoirs (Jaded Ibis Press) and a collection of prose, The Failure Age (Bloof Books). Her work has been featured at The New York Times, The Guardian, ELLE, TIME, The Cut, Mother Tongue, Slate, Electric Literature, Vox, Rumpus, Salon, The Believer, Ms. Magazine, Poetry Foundation, and many others. She currently teaches creative writing at Stanford and has taught and presented work at Columbia University, New York University, University of California, Berkeley, University of Chicago, The Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, University of Virginia, State University of New York at Buffalo, and many other venues. She has also taught writing at Catapult, Corporeal Writing, Hugo House, Writing Workshops, and Write or Die. She holds an MFA in Writing from California Institute of the Arts and a PhD in English literature from SUNY at Buffalo. She runs the popular newsletter Mad Woman and lives in the East Bay.
Accessibility
The event is located on the ground level, and there are no stairs between the entrance and event space.
show less
Date/Times:
1231 9th Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94111
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