Introducing #KateBriggs24

Reading Kate Briggs Together

Welcome to #KateBriggs24! This is a collaborative reading and study project organized by Kim McNeill and Rebecca Hussey (me). Everyone is welcome to participate. The plan is to spend 2024 reading and discussing Briggs’s two solo-authored works alongside her two translations of Roland Barthes. We plan to read slowly — only about 20-30 pages of Briggs and 10-20 pages of Barthes a week — so we can really dig into the language and ideas in the books and have time to discuss in depth.

We will begin with This Little Art and The Preparation of the Novel first and read these through the winter and spring. Then we’ll pick up The Long Form and How to Live Together for summer and fall.

Please feel free to read at whatever pace you want and as many or as few of the books as you want. If you only want to read one of the four main books we are covering, that’s fine! If you want to read only Briggs books or only Barthes books, that’s fine! We want this to be flexible and fun.

You will find an overview of the project at Kim’s website. We will be adding resources and links as we go along, and if you have resources to add, please let us know.

You can download a PDF of our schedule here. Our idea with this schedule is to keep the group roughly on the same pages so we can discuss them in depth. You are welcome to follow the schedule day-by-day along with us or modify your own reading as you see fit.

We are using this Substack newsletter because it’s a way of keeping everyone updated on our reading schedule and resources, and it’s also a good space for discussions. I will be sending out a very brief post about once a week, max, to keep you updated on the pages we are reading and to send relevant information and links as they come up. If you are inspired to discuss that week’s reading, you can use the comment button in the email to post on the Substack site.

If you are on Twitter, Bluesky, or Instagram and want to post there, that’s great. We are using the hashtag #KateBriggs24 to make everyone’s posts easy to find. Links to our social media accounts are below. If you are not a social media user, no problem. You can stay updated and share thoughts through the newsletter.

We also plan to have Zoom meetings every 4-6 weeks for those who want to chat in person. More information on that soon!

Reading will commence on January 13th. Thank you for your interest and we’ll be back soon with more.

Rebecca and Kim

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Find Kim on Twitter, Bluesky, and Instagram*

Find Rebecca on Twitter, Bluesky, and Instagram*

*Our Instragram accounts are locked, but we welcome bookish friend requests