Literature
Events
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Exploring the Literature of Afro-Surrealism
Thursdays, 7-9 pm ET, beginning April 24 This spring, the MEP Literature Reading Group takes up novels loosely grouped as "Afro-Surrealism." Borrowing from use by Amiri Baraka in the 1970s, D. Scot Miller encouraged use of the term through his 2009 essay, “Afrosurreal Manifesto." Writers and artists in the African diaspora have now reclaimed the ... Read more
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Darkest Los Angeles
Institute for the Radical Imagination NY, United StatesReading GroupDennis Broe leads a group reading of his five Los Angeles novels set in the film-noir period of the late 1940s and early 1950s. The contradictions we will unearth in that postwar period, the period of crime films that visually documented this seedy reality, have never been resolved, only continually papered over, and so they resound today.
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Reading Death of the Author by Nigeria’s Nnedi Okorafor
Featured Science and Visionary FictionOnline Event - Zoom Meeting"To build a better future, we have to envision it first." Reading science fiction, discussing it together, and reading it politically, offers one tool for "envisioning" a future worth building. We continue our explorations of diverse points of view of social conflict and resolution, possible and imagined just worlds, here on Earth and perhaps afar.
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Reading Science Fiction Politically: Severance by Ling Ma
Featured Science and Visionary FictionOnline Event - Zoom Meeting"To build a better future, we have to envision it first." Reading science fiction, discussing it together, and reading it politically, offers one tool for "envisioning" a future worth building. We continue our explorations of diverse points of view of social conflict and resolution, possible and imagined just worlds, here on Earth and perhaps afar.
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Summer in France in the Shade of Noir
FeaturedOnline Event - Zoom MeetingReading GroupThe MEP Literature Group continues its tradition of easy summer reading focusing on the noir genre. Our two selections - 'Command Performance' and 'Creation Lake' - are both set in France and both deal with corruption in high places by right-wing politicians and corporations who manipulate inept investigators of low social standing and morals.
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Resisting Oppression: Reading Science Fiction Politically
Featured Science and Visionary FictionOnline Event - Zoom Meeting"To build a better future, we have to envision it first." Reading science fiction, discussing it together, and reading it politically, offers one tool for "envisioning" a future worth building. We continue our explorations of diverse points of view of social conflict and resolution, possible and imagined just worlds, here on Earth and perhaps afar.
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The Politics of Collecting with Eunsong Kim
Online Event - Zoom MeetingIn her new book, The Politics of Collecting: Race and the Aestheticization of Property, Eunsong Kim traces how racial capitalism and colonialism situated the rise of US museum collections and conceptual art forms. Ranging from the conception of philanthropy devised by the robber barons of the late nineteenth century to ongoing digitization projects, Kim provides a ... Read more
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Victor Serge: Unruly Revolutionary, with Mitchell Abidor
FeaturedRecording available on YouTubeJoin us for a conversation with Mitchell Abidor, author of the forthcoming book, "Victor Serge: Unruly Revolutionary."
Today, thanks to his classic memoirs and novels, Victor Serge is highly esteemed by virtually all segments of the left. But who was this man, who led such a thrilling life on the frontlines of history? -
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Octavia Butler: ‘Positive Obsession’ and ‘Wild Seed’
Reading GroupAlternate Mondays, Next on December 8, 5-6:30 pm ET Watch for new selections coming soon, featuring Frankenstein and the Chicano Frankenstein. Join us for a new appreciation of Octavia Butler, beginning with Susana M. Morris’s pathbreaking new biography, Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia Butler followed by Butler’s prophetic Wild Seed and other ... Read more
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Reading Science Fiction and Speculative Literature Politically – Spring 2026 Edition
FeaturedOnline Event - Zoom MeetingReading GroupAlternate Mondays, next on June 15, 5-6:30 pm ET MEP's alternative literature group begins a new series of novels, short fiction and non-fiction. Speculative fiction, reborn from traditional science fiction, and also known by its alter ego "visionary fiction" and other identities, including horror, more than ever offers space for exploration of class, race, gender, ... Read more
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Porn, Gambling, and the American Psyche with Dennis Broe
FeaturedOnline Event - Zoom MeetingNovelist and film critic Dennis Broe takes a critical look at the pornography and gambling industries - the new bread and circuses, only without the bread. With the American empire in decline and with working and living conditions worsening for most American workers as prices rise, wages stagnate and AI comes for their jobs, these ... Read more
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Monthly Literature Group: ‘Tijuana Straits’
Online Event - Zoom MeetingReading GroupThe MEP Literature Group's new monthly series meets on or about the last Saturday of each month. Our August selection is 'Tijuana Straits' by Kem Nunn, a noir fiction set along the US-Mexico border.
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Get blood and consciousness moving with “Ring Shout”
Online Event - Zoom MeetingReading GroupNext on Monday August 31, 5-6:30 pm ET for Ring Shout Reading Science Fiction Politically, Midterms edition explores climate crisis, artificial intelligence in politics, a reawakened Klan, and more by way of four recent novels and selected short stories. Our next book, Ring Shout, P. Djèlí Cleark, poses a well-timed question: consider with us, what ... Read more
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P DJeli Clark on ‘Ring Shout’, Writing Stories, Building Worlds, Usually Fantastic
FeaturedOnline Event - Zoom MeetingVirtual EventBook Event or PanelPhenderson Djéli Clark is the award winning and Hugo, Nebula, Sturgeon, and World Fantasy nominated author of the novel Ring Shout, which MEP's Speculative Fiction will read next. Clark also has written Abeni’s Song and A Master of Djinn, and the novellas The Dead Cat Tail Assassins, Ring Shout, The Black God’s Drums and The Haunting of Tram Car 015. His stories have ... Read more
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Elections and Tech Futures: Read Malka Older’s ‘Infomocracy’
FeaturedOnline Event - Zoom MeetingReading GroupOctober Selection for the Science and Visionary Fiction Reading Group Alternate Mondays, Next on October 12, at 5 pm ET "It’s been twenty years and two election cycles since Information, a powerful search engine monopoly, pioneered the switch from warring nation-states to global microdemocracy." So begins Infomocracy, Malka Older's political thriller of a science fiction ... Read more
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