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Please join us for a reading with Albert Mobilio as he sits down with Jennifer Firestone to discuss his new book of poems, Beginning of the Hollow.
About Beginning of the Hollow:
"It’s impossible to characterize Beginning of the Hollow. In the early pages, Albert Mobilio lavishes on us the spellbinding pacing of acrobatic, recursive sentences—aka his 'narrative difficulty'—which, though they include riveting observational details, 'strange turns' of syntax, understated humor, and a pentathlon of competing dictions—feel somehow like CAT scans of the soul. Then there are softly spoken introspective poems and, toward the end, a long sequence of short gnomic declarations and fragments so strikingly various in tone, so linguistically alive and entertaining, they might be renga composed by some hard-boiled detective and a lovelorn Buddhist philosopher. Charged with vivacity, totally 'unbuttoned,' psychologically alarming, and fashioned with a dexterity few poets can match, Mobilio’s Beginning of the Hollow comes fully loaded. And here you’ll find even 'better words than the words/ that make people do things.'"
—Forrest Gander
Presented by the Creative Writing Program at The New School for Social Research.
Albert Mobilio is the author of five books of poetry: Beginning of the Hollow (2026), Same Faces (2020), Touch Wood (2011), Me with Animal Towering (2002), and The Geographics (1995). A book of fiction, Games and Stunts, appeared in 2016. His essays and reviews have appeared in Artforum, Paris Review Daily, Harper’s, The New York Times Book Review, BOMB, Cabinet, and Tin House. A selection of essays—Readings Against Type—was published in 2025. He is the recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship, a Whiting Award, and a National Book Critics Circle Award for reviewing. A former editor at Bookforum and Hyperallergic, he was also an associate professor of literary studies at Eugene Lang College at The New School.
Jennifer Firestone is the author of five books of poetry, the most recent being Story published by Ugly Duckling Press. Her sixth book of poetry, Art History, is forthcoming from Black Square Editions. Firestone co-edited Other Influences: An Untold History of Feminist Avant-garde Poetry with Marcella Durand (MIT Press) and Letters To Poets: Conversations about Poetics, Politics and Community, with Dana Teen Lomax (Saturnalia Books). She is an Associate Professor of Literary Studies and Chair of Writing at the New School’s Eugene Lang College and also the Director of Academic Fellows, The New School’s pedagogy and mentorship program.
The New School offered the first academic creative writing workshop in 1931 and pioneered a new philosophy of education. The idea: students would make their own lives and their own stories part of their education. Today, The New School continues to celebrate and cultivate daring and diverse new voices through its Creative Writing program. The value of this approach is reflected in the publications and achievements of our MFA Creative Writing graduates and faculty.
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