TrailOff Artist Talks: Carmen Maria Machado

TrailOff is an immersive augmented reality audio performance presenting ten original audio narratives, each connected to paths within the Philadelphia region’s expansive Circuit Trails network. Accessed via a mobile app, listeners will hear original dramas while walking each route. Written by local authors in collaboration with Swim Pony and the Pennsylvania Environmental Council (PEC), these stories center experiences that connect with communities traditionally underserved by environmental programming.

As part of the 2020 Fringe Festival, FringeArts hosts a series of talks with the local authors featured in TrailOff. On Saturday, September 26

Carmen Maria Machado reads from her body of work and speaks about its considerations of folklore with Pennsylvania Environmental Council Program Manager Lizzie Hessek.

Carmen Maria Machado’s debut short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties, was a finalist for the National Book Award and the winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize. Her essays, fiction, and criticism have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Granta, Harper’s Bazaar, Tin House, Vogue, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the Guggenheim Foundation, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, and The Millay Colony for the Arts. She is the Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania and lives in Philadelphia with her wife.