Marcia H. HowardAuthor in Residence

ELAINE KAHN is the author of Women in Public (City Lights, 2015) and Romance or The End (Soft Skull, 2020). Writing has appeared in the LA Times, Harper’s Bazaar, Granta, Frieze, The Brooklyn Rail and Art Papers. She received an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ workshop and has taught at Pomona College, Saint Mary’s College, and the University of Iowa. She is the founder of the Poetry Field School. Kahn is Writer in Residence at UCLA English for spring 2022.

ABOUT Romance or the End (Soft Skull, 2020)

Romance or The End takes up the tools of romantic narrative in order to perform the rupture between self and story that occurs at the onset of trauma. Using known and pathologized literary arcs, Elaine Kahn unspools the fundamental instability of truth, love, and language to create an experiential portrait of narrative’s power to both disfigure and restore.

“This book takes me right back to the Carnage Years―yours, too―sacrificed to love. If only I, you, had possessed Elaine Kahn’s wisdom and wit. These poems are lacerating, coy, bloody, and so true I wanted to memorize lines from them.” ―Rachel Kushner, author of The Mars Room and The Flamethrowers

EVENTS with ELAINE

Tea and Conversation: Elaine Kahn

When: Tuesday, April 19, 2022, 4:00pm
Where: Grace M. Hunt Memorial English Reading Room, Kaplan Hall 235