Hammer Museum

In Adam Moss’s new book The Work of Art, the former editor of New York magazine asks “What is the work of art?” Weaving conversations with some of the most accomplished artists of our time together with the journal entries, napkin doodles, and sketches that were their tools, Moss traces the tortuous paths and artist decisions that led to the making of transcendent novels, paintings, movies, songs, jokes, and more. Organized and hosted by author and UCLA professor Mona Simpson. Copresented by UCLA Department of English. Adam Moss was the editor of New York magazine, The New York Times Magazine,...

Written over a decade while the author lived on four continents, award-winning poet V. Penelope Pelizzon’s latest collection, A Gaze Hound That Hunteth by the Eye, maps the cultural legacies we cherish against those we reject. Playful and wrenching by turns, with lines inflected by the spoken music of their Arabic, Oshiwambo, Xhosa, and Italian contexts, these profound poems explore a life where displacement is the norm. Organized and hosted by poet, literary critic, and UCLA Distinguished Research Professor Stephen Yenser. Cosponsored by the UCLA Department of English and UCLA Recreation.

Best-selling author Fae Myenne Ng’s new memoir, Orphan Bachelors, offers a personal, timely portrait of San Francisco’s Chinatown and of a family building a life in a country bent on their exclusion. Hua Hsu called Orphan Bachelors, “so many treasures at once: an enthralling memoir, an act of reckoning, a history of American exclusion and Chinatown resilience, an attempt to conjure the vast horizons that her forebears were never allowed to imagine.” Organized and hosted by author and UCLA professor Mona Simpson. Copresented by the UCLA Department of English. Fae Myenne Ng is the author of bestseller and PEN/Faulkner Fiction...