Writers Bloc Presents Peggy Orenstein and Julia Sweeney
Monday, January 30, 2023
7:30pm
New Roads School
3131 Olympic Boulevard Santa Monica, CA 90404
Parking available onsite
Ticket $25
WE REQUIRE THAT YOU WEAR A MASK AT THE PROGRAM.
What did you do during the lockdown in the early days of the pandemic? Did you bake cakes, perfect sourdough, or clean out your closets? Peggy Orenstein, the acclaimed author of Boys & Sex, and Girls & Sex, started her pandemic experience much like all of us: tackling an interest or a need.
But she went a few steps further. Well, she went many steps further. What started out as a lark turned into a major exploration about women and work, clothes, fashion, and how they all relate to class, power, and culture. All this from knitting. Peggy decided to go back to the basics: to shear a sheep, and turn that fleece into a garment. It’s not as easy as it sounds. In this astonishing memoir, Unraveling: What I Learned About Life While Shearing Sheep, Dying Wool, and Making the World’s Ugliest Sweater, often really funny and often really poignant, Peggy makes us reconsider the very nature of work, of clothes, and the intersection of past and present.
In conversation with author, playwright and actress Julia Sweeney. Sweeney was a longtime player on Saturday Night Live. Among other accomplishments, she is the playwright of the terrific, critically acclaimed and award winning one woman show, And God Said Ha!, where she mined personal trauma into comedy.
Check out these great reviews of Orenstein’s new book:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2023/01/19/unraveling-book-orenstein/
https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/books/review-in-unraveling-peggy-orenstein-knits-together-humorous-memoir-and-enthralling-research
https://www.startribune.com/review-unraveling-by-peggy-orenstein/