@Macaulay Faculty Scholars: The Book of Eve by Carmen Boullosa

Carmen Boullosa is Macaulay’s Distinguished Lecturer and one of Mexico’s leading novelists, poets, and playwrights. She’ll discuss her newly translated book, The Book of Eve with translator Samantha Schnee. Moderator for the evening will be Senior Associate Dean of Academic Affairs, Dr. Roblin Meeks.

Boullosa’s new book offers a feminist twist of the Book of Genesis that dismantles patriarchy and rebuilds our understanding of the world–from the origin of gastronomy, to the domestication of animals, to the cultivation of the land, and pleasure–all through the feminine gaze.

Carmen Boullosa
Author

Carmen Boullosa is the author of a dozen volumes of poetry, has published nineteen novels, as well as four books of essays and ten plays (seven staged). She is a Distinguished Lecturer at Macaulay Honors College, CUNY. She was a Guggenheim Fellow, as well as a Cullman Center, among other honors, and has received multiple literary awards (in Spain, the Gijón Prize (novel), the Casa de America (poetry), and the Rosalía de Castro for all her work; in Germany, the LiBeratur Prize and the Anna Seghers Prize; in Mexico the Ibargüengoitia, Xavier Villarrutia and José Emilio Pacheco in Mexico, among others. Her visual artist work has been exhibited at the Museo de Arte Moderno, Carrillo Gil and MUNAL (Museo Nacional de Arte) in Mexico, the Sala Pablo Ruiz Picasso in Madrid, and Macaulay Honors College among others. ISLAA has part of her visual art archive.

The New York Public Library recently acquired her archive (to 2016)

Samantha Schnee
Translator

Samantha Schnee is the founding editor of Words Without Borders. Her translation of Carmen Boullosa’s Texas: The Great Theft was shortlisted for the PEN America Translation Prize in 2015 and her most recent translation is Boullosa’s Book of Eve (Deep Vellum, 2023), which was shortlisted for the biennial Mario Vargas Llosa novel award in the Spanish. Her translation of Jeannette Clariond’s Goddesses of Water was selected for the Academy of American Poets’ 2022 Featured Fall Books. She is the recipient of a 2023 National Endowment of the Arts Literature Fellowship to translate Boullosa’s novel El complot de los románticos and a 2024 Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin to translate Irati Elorrieta’s Luces de invierno.

Dr. Roblin Meeks
Moderator

Dr. Roblin Meeks is Macaulay’s Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. Dr. Meeks is an essayist, lapsed professional philosopher, and current higher-education leader. His academic research and publications in philosophy of mind and cognitive science engage questions of self-identification and mis-identification, senses of bodily ownership, mirror self-recognition, and imitation.

His creative nonfiction has appeared in Electric Literature, Smokelong Quarterly, Wigleaf, Human Parts, and elsewhere. He also has a newsletter, “How to Talk to Yourself,” a series of creative-nonfiction guides about time, love, work, parenting, and other big stuff.