Helen Phillips will read from her most recent novel, HUM, a work of speculative fiction set in the near-future. She will then take audience questions about the book and her writing process, with a particular focus on craft-related matters.
Synopsis of HUM:In a near-future world addled by climate change and inhabited by intelligent robots called “hums,” May loses her job to artificial intelligence. Desperate to resolve her family’s debt and secure their future for another few months, she becomes a guinea pig in an experiment that alters her face so it cannot be recognized by surveillance.
Seeking reprieve from her recent hardships and her family’s addiction to their devices, May splurges on passes for her family to spend three nights respite in the Botanical Garden: a rare green refuge where forests, streams, and animals still thrive. But when her children come under threat, May is forced to put her trust in a hum of uncertain motives to save her family.
Written with “precision, insight, sensitivity, and compassion” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review), Hum is a “striking new work of dystopian fiction” (Vogue) that delves into the complexities of marriage, motherhood, and selfhood in a world compromised by global warming and dizzying technological advancement, a world of both dystopian and utopian possibilities.
Helen Phillips is the author of six books, including, most recently, the novel Hum, a Slate Top 10 Book of 2024, an Economist Best Book of 2024, and a New York Times Editors’ Choice. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, and the Italo Calvino Prize in Fabulist Fiction. Her novel The Need was longlisted for the National Book Award and named a New York Times Notable Book. Her collection Some Possible Solutions received the John Gardner Fiction Book Award. Her novel The Beautiful Bureaucrat, a New York Times Notable Book, was a finalist for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her debut collection, And Yet They Were Happy, was named a notable collection by The Story Prize and was re-released in 2023. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and the New York Times, and on Selected Shorts. She is a professor at Brooklyn College, and lives in Brooklyn with artist/cartoonist Adam Douglas Thompson, their children, and their dog.
This event is colloquium credit eligible. REGISTER HERE to attend via Zoom.