Brooklyn: Jazmina Barrera and Kate Zambreno
6:00 pm EDT | 5:00 pm CDT | 4:00 pm MDT | 3:00 pm PDT
Books Are Magic | 225 Smith Street | Brooklyn, NY
and streaming on YouTube Live
Two Lines Press and Books Are Magic welcome Jazmina Barrera and Kate Zambreno for a discussion of Linea Nigra: An Essay on Pregnancy and Earthquakes, by Jazmina Barrera and translated by Christina MacSweeney.
“Essayist Jazmina Barrera takes that physical line [the linea nigra] and writes about and (metaphorically) beyond it, packing her narrative memoir full of carefully considered and exquisitely worded musings on motherhood.…the multilayered, deeply felt work that her life experience and obvious talent have combined to produce is eminently worthy of acclaim.” —Vogue (The Best Books of 2022 So Far)
An intimate exploration of motherhood, Linea Nigra approaches the worries and joys of childbearing from a diverse range of inspirations and traditions, from Louise Bourgeois to Ursula K. Le Guin to the indigenous Nahua model Luz Jiménez. Part memoir and part manifesto, Barrera’s singular insights, delivered in candid prose, clarify motherhood while also cherishing the mysteries of the body.
Writing through her first pregnancy, birthing, breastfeeding, and young motherhood, Barrera embraces the subject fully, making lucid connections between maternity, earthquakes, lunar eclipses, and creative labor. Inspired by the author’s own mother’s painting practice, Linea Nigra concludes with an impassioned call: childbearing is art, and art is childbearing.
This event will also be broadcast on YouTube Live. For more information and guidelines for attending an in-person event at Books Are Magic, please see the registration page(opens in a new tab).
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.
Kate Zambreno is the author most recently of Animal Stories, a collection on zoos and Kafka, part of Transit Books’ Undelivered Lectures series. A paperback of The Light Room is also forthcoming from Transit. Two novels, Foam and Performance Art, are forthcoming from Semiotext(e) in 2026 and 2027. They are a Ph.D. candidate in Performance Studies at NYU.