Lauren Elkin is the author of several critically-acclaimed books, including Scaffolding, Art Monsters, and Flâneuse. She will be presenting her most recent work Vocal Break: On Women, Music and Power in a book presentation at AB. In the hours before she will give a workshop related to her work.

This workshop will think about the passage as a rich transitional literary space. Literature is full of passages: we easily share moments in our readings which we have enjoyed, or perform close readings of certain passages in our critical writing; but we also engage in a practice of passing as a form of transition: from one idea to another, one scene to another, one figure/character/setting to another. How are our texts pieced together, what is at the sutures, the connections, the places where we could go in any number of different directions? How do we bring disparate material together? We may also, in our literary perambulations, have reason to consider the impasse. Please come ready to discuss at least one passage you like, from literature, film, art, music, whatever your medium of choice, to read a bit of Benjamin, and to draft some passagenwerk of your own.