Jazmina Barrera and Philip Hoare: Lighthouses and the Sea
Virtual Event
We’ve teamed up with our friends at Pt. Reyes Books and the Point Reyes National Seashore Association to celebrate the publication of Jazmina Barrera’s On Lighthouses. Jazmina will be joined by Philip Hoare and Stephen Sparks for a conversation about lighthouses, the ocean, and our relationship with peril and safeguarding at the edge of the sea.
About On Lighthouses
Far from home, in the confines of a dim New York apartment where the oppressive skyscrapers further isolate her, Jazmina Barrera offers a tour of her lighthouses–those structures whose message is “first and foremost, that human beings are here.”
Starting with Robert Louis Stevenson’s grandfather, an engineer charged with illuminating the Scottish coastline, On Lighthouses artfully examines lighthouses from the Spanish to the Oregon coasts and those in the works of Virginia Woolf, Edgar Allan Poe, Ingmar Bergman, and many others.
In trying to “collect” lighthouses by obsessively describing them, Barrera begins to question the nature of writing, collecting, and how, by staring so intently at one thing we are only trying to avoid others. Equal parts personal memoir and literary history, On Lighthouses takes the reader on a desperate flight from raging sea to cold stone–from a hopeless isolation to a meaningful one–concluding at last in a place of peace: the home of a selfless, guiding light.
Jazmina Barrera’s books have been published in nine countries and translated to English, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, and French. Her book Cuerpo extraño (Foreign Body) was awarded the Latin American Voices prize by Literal Publishing, and On Lighthouses was chosen for the Indie Next list by IndieBound. Linea Nigra was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Autobiography Prize, CANIEM’s Book of the Year award, and the Amazon Primera Novela (First Novel) Award. She is editor and co-founder of Ediciones Antílope. She lives in Mexico City.
Philip Hoare’s books include biographies of Stephen Tennant and Noel Coward, Wilde’s Last Stand, Spike Island, and England’s Lost Eden. His book Leviathan or, The Whale won the 2009 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction, followed by The Sea Inside (2013) and RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR (2017). His films include the BBC Arena, The Hunt for Moby-Dick, and I was a dark star always, celebrating Wilfred Owen’s love of the sea. He is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Southampton, and co-curator of the Moby-Dick Big Read and, currently, the Ancient Mariner Big Read.
Stephen Sparks is co-owner of Point Reyes Books with his wife, Molly Parent. In addition to serving on the Center’s board, he is a board member of Dorothy, a publishing project, and Open Letter Books, and he has served as a juror for various literary prizes and awards, including the National Book Award for Poetry and the Best Translated Book Award.