Reading and Exhibition: Dry River

This event will take place at the Amphithéâtre Tillion,  Maison de la Recherche Germaine Tillion (MRGT), 5 boulevard Lavoisier, University of Angers.

Join novelist Alicia J Rouverol and artist Andy Broadey for an event featuring a reading from Dry River (2023) and an exhibition examining the visual imaginary of Wallace Stegner’s landmark work, Angle of Repose (1971). Broadey’s and Rouverol’s works emerged from a shared interest in narrativizing the economics of neoliberalism, which in turn led to Broadey’s cover illustration of Rouverol’s novel. Discussion, Q & A, and book purchase/signing will follow (cash only).

Dry River (Bridge House Publishing, 2023). Sara Greystone’s career as a public defender is spiraling after a disastrous court case: an African American woman has been charged with assault for fighting back against her abuser, a white man, and Sara makes the risky decision to put her client’s children on trial in defense of their mother—resulting in deleterious effects for all. A move to California is supposed to get her and her IT consultant husband both back on their feet, but the state is in the midst of a crippling economic downturn. Spanning 1997 to 2012, Dry River echoes Wallace Stegner’s classic Angle of Repose, moving across place and time to chart the slow collapse of a marriage alongside a declining US economy.

Dry River is available for loan in the library’s collection.

Alicia J Rouverol is co-author of “I Was Content and Not Content”: The Story of Linda Lord and the Closing of Penobscot Poultry, which was called “compassionate and sorely needed” by The New York Times and nominated for the OHA Book Award. A recipient of the Elizabeth George Foundation and Society of Authors grants, she has lectured in Creative Writing at the University of Salford since 2019. Dry River, her first novel, was published by Bridge House Publishing in 2023. It was nominated for six literary prizes and has been read in book clubs on both sides of the Atlantic.

Untitled (Angle of Repose). A photo-series that examines themes of tension and pressure within Wallace Stegner’s novel, the title of which denotes the steepest gradient at which a pile of loose material can remain stable. In relation to characters in the novel, the title conveys both the optimal state for a person’s life and an intolerable build-up of tension within it. Broadey explores the wider implications of this within histories of frontierism and their contemporary resonance within neoliberal constructions of individualism that Rouverol re-examines in the context of the 2008 global crisis.

Andy Broadey is Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Art, History and Theory at University of Central Lancashire. His installations examine the histories of the capitalocene and destabilise ideologies of globalisation. He has recently exhibited at Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool and The Portico Library in Manchester. He has recently published articles in the journals, Arts (MDPI), Matter: Journal of New Materialist Research (University of Barcelona) and Journal of Visual Arts Practice (Taylor & Francis).