Merlinda Bobis Through performance and conversation with Distinguished Professor Sherene Razack, award-winning poet,

novelist and dramatist Merlinda Bobis reflects on Philippine indigenous values of kinship and the

intertwined journey of writer-and-characters in her novels Locust Girl. A Lovesong (2016 Christina Stead

Prize for Fiction) and Fish-Hair Woman (2014 Philippine National Book Award), and in her new poetry

book Accidents of Composition (Spinifex 2017).

Thursday October 12th, 2017

193 Humanities

4:00pm-6:00pm

Merlinda responds to the growing climate of conflict in our compromised planet. She hopes that in the

border, there could be accidents of kindness.

For those walking to the border for dear life,

and for those seeking a place of kinship in resistance

Please have no fear and Take this offered hand Your thirst, your thirst

Is my only affliction

—Locust Girl. A Lovesong

Sponsored by the Penny Kanner Endowed Chair in Women’s Studies,

The Department of Gender Studies and The Center for the Study of Women