AGRYROS: A Reading of IRONBOUND presented by Sun Valley Playwright’s Residency

Written by Martyna Majok • Featuring Aly Wepplo

This performance will be at The Arygros, 120 Main St South in Ketchum.

At a bus stop in a run-down New Jersey town, Darja, a Polish immigrant cleaning lady, is done talking about feelings; it’s time to talk money. Over the course of 20 years, and three relationships, Darja negotiates for her future with men who can offer her love or security, but never both.

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Martyna Majok’s Ironbound is a darkly funny, heartbreaking portrait of a woman for whom love is a luxury—and a liability—as she fights to survive in America.

Free Admission • Tickets Required. Reserve your ticket here.

A Conversation with Rachel Louise Snyder 

We call it domestic violence. We call it private violence. Sometimes we call it intimate terrorism. But whatever we call it, we generally do not believe it has anything to do with us. Rachel Louise Snyder frames this urgent and immersive account of the scale of domestic violence around key stories that explode the common myths — that if things were bad enough victims would just leave; that a violent person cannot become nonviolent; that shelter is an adequate response; and more insidiously, that violence inside the home is disconnected from other forms of violence. Through the stories of victims, perpetrators, law enforcement, and reform movements, Snyder explores the real roots of private violence, its far-reaching consequences for society, and what it will take to truly address it.

Join The Community Library and The Advocates for this community event and conversation with Rachel Louise Snyder, author of No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us, a finalist for the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award in General Nonfiction, winner of a Kirkus Award in Nonfiction, a New York Times Top 10 Books of the Year, and winner of the LA Times Book Award and the New York Public Library’s Bernstein Award. Snyder is also the author of Fugitive Denim: A Moving Story of People and Pants in the Borderless World of Global Trade and the novel What We’ve Lost is Nothing. Her print work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times magazine, Slate, Salon, the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the New Republic, and others. 

She holds a B.A. from North Central College and an M.F.A. from Emerson College, and is a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow. Currently, Snyder is an Associate Professor Creative Writing and Journalism at American University in Washington, DC.

Registration is recommended to save a seat. Snyder’s lecture will also be livestreamed on the Library’s Vimeo and will be available to watch through November 10, 2022. Click here to watch online. A book signing with Chapter One will follow.

2022 Sun Valley Playwrights’ Resident 

On Thursday, October 20, the Library welcomes Martyna Majok, the 2022 Sun Valley Playwrights’ Resident, for a conversation on her work. Majok will read the opening monologue from her Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Cost of Living, which deftly challenges the typical perceptions of those living with disabilities and delves deep into the ways class, race, nationality, and wealth can create gulfs between people, even as they long for the ability to connect. The story follows Eddie, an unemployed truck driver, and his estranged ex-wife, Ani, who find themselves unexpectedly reunited after a terrible accident leaves her quadriplegic. John, a brilliant PhD student with cerebral palsy, hires Jess, a first-generation recent graduate who has fallen on desperate times, as his new aide.

Majok will be in conversation with Martha Williams, the Library’s director of programs and education, to discuss her writing process before taking questions from the audience. The program will be livestreamed, and a recording will not be available. Click here to watch live.
 
Martyna Majok was born in Bytom, Poland and raised in New Jersey and Chicago. She was awarded the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play, Cost of Living, which debuts this fall on Broadway. Other plays include Sanctuary City, Queens, and Ironbound, which have been produced across American and international stages.

Film Screening with Jessica and Sammy Matsaw 

Filmmakers Jessica and Sammy Matsaw will present their short documentary film, River of Return, and discuss their ongoing work with Shoshone-Bannock youth on the Middle Fork of the Salmon River. Through guided river trips, the Matsaws have created a corridor of connection for their tribal youth and people through their project, River Newe. Throughout the film, the community forages, fishes, and navigates the landscape together. They dig into their personal histories and language while telling a broader story of indigenous power and resilience. 

This program is presented in partnership with the Sun Valley Museum of Art. Registration is being run through SVMoA, so please click here to save your seat.

The film and conversation will be livestreamed, and a recording will be available through November 12. Click here to watch online.

Thursday, October 13, 2022, 6:00pm-7:00pm in the Lecture Hall.

Book Launch with Alli Frank and Asha Youmans 

Join us for the launch of the new novel by Alli Frank and Asha Youmans: Never Meant to Meet You, a riotously funny, emotionally real look at race and religion, love and heartache, and the realities of parenting through it all. The authors will be in conversation with librarian Aly Wepplo.

Wednesday, October 12, 2022, 6:00pm – 7:00pm in the Lecture Hall.

The novel follows two smart, strong women caught in mid-life tragedies who manage to laugh through the tears and heartache of the modern world they are navigating. Frank and Youmans share that, “For the two of us, the profound grief of all that we lost living through a pandemic needed a place to land.’” They married their feelings of isolation and sadness with a desperate need to laugh by writing a semi-autobiographical novel about a Jewish woman and a Black Baptist woman who are dealing with their own grief in their own ways but are forced together to process and support one another to move forward in life.  

In Never Meant to Meet You, Marjette Lewis, self-appointed fixer of other people’s woes, is uncharacteristically determined to keep to her side of the driveway when it comes to her flawless neighbor Noa Abrams. Professionally, Marjette has her hands full as she prepares for a new class of kindergarteners and her first year of teaching without her best friend, Judy. And at home, her son’s budding manhood challenges her expectations, and her vexing ex-husband continues to be a thorn in her side. But when tragedy strikes Marjette’s street, and an unexpected child shows up on the first day of school with an uncle who has all the class moms aflutter, Marjette is forced to contend with both her neighbor and her own heartache over losing the life she once thought was guaranteed. Through laughter, tears, and the gift of found family, Marjette and Noa navigate the rituals of loss together and discover the strength to remake their lives―whether they meant to or not.

A book signing with Iconoclast and light reception with the Wood River Jewish Community will follow.

 

Sandra Cisneros’ lecture is proudly presented by The Community Library and Sun Valley Museum of Art. Cisneros is an award-winning poet, short story writer, novelist, and essayist whose work explores the lives of the working-class.

Her novel The House on Mango Street has sold over seven million copies, has been translated into over twenty-five languages, and is required reading in elementary, high school, and universities across the nation. As part of her stay, Cisneros will address over two hundred 9th grade students at Wood River High School who have read her novel. A new book, Martita, I Remember You/Martita, te recuerdo, a story in English and in Spanish, was published in 2021. In the fall of 2022, a new collection of poetry, Woman Without Shame, Cisneros’s first in 28 years, will be published by Knopf and by Vintage Español in a Spanish language translation, Mujer sin vergüenza, by Liliana Valenzuela.

Her presentation will be in both English and Spanish. Cisneros is a dual citizen of the United States and Mexico. As a single woman, she chose to have books instead of children. She earns her living by her pen.

This event will be held at the Wood River High School Performing Arts Theater in Hailey. Tickets are $15 for adults and $5 for students 18 & under. Tickets will be on sale at 10:00 a.m. on Tuesday, September 13 at www.svmoa.org.

This program will not be livestreamed or available for later viewing. A book signing with Chapter One Bookstore will follow.

As a special introduction for the evening, Denice Carlos and Hector Flores of Las Cafeteras will perform a song prior to Sandra Cisneros’ lecture. Las Cafeteras will be in residence with SVMoA the week of the lecture and will be performing a concert and will work with students. Both the lecture and residency are part of The Museum’s Community Celebration “Honoring Traditions: Día de los Muertos,” made possible in part through a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy demands wisdom.