In Conversation: Jenny Odell and Cathy Park Hong

Join Jenny Odell and Cathy Park Hong, acclaimed authors of Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock and Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning, in conversation at Mechanics’ Institute.

Praise for Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock:

“This grand, eclectic, wide-ranging work is about the various problems that swirl out from dominant conceptions of ‘time,’ which sometimes means history, sometimes means an individual lifetime and sometimes means the future” - The New York Times

Praise for Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning:

“Hong begins her new book of essays with a bang. . . .The essays wander a variegated terrain of memoir, criticism and polemic, oscillating between smooth proclamations of certainty and twitches of self-doubt. . . . Minor Feelings is studded with moments [of] candor and dark humor shot through with glittering self-awareness.” - The New York Times

About the Authors

Jenny Odell is an Oakland-based artist and the author of the books How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy and Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock. Odell previously taught studio art at Stanford University and has been an artist in residence at Recology SF (otherwise known as the dump), the Internet Archive, and the San Francisco Planning Department. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and the Paris Review.

Cathy Park Hong’s New York Times bestselling book of creative nonfiction, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning, was published in Spring 2020 by One World/Random House and Profile Books (UK). Minor Feelings was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography, and earned her recognition on TIME’s 100 Most Influential People of 2021 list. She is also the author of poetry collections Engine Empire, Dance Dance Revolution, and Translating Mo'um. Her prose and poetry have been published in The New York Times, New Republic, The Guardian, Paris Review, Poetry, and elsewhere. She is a Professor in English at UC Berkeley.