Giada Scodellaro s+2
presents Ruins, Child,
in conversation with Katie Kitamura
at McNally Jackson s+6
Winner of the 2024 Novel Prize, Giada Scodellaro’s Ruins, Child is an irreducibly original debut hybrid novel—a startlingly beautiful and unclassifiable book
Centered on six women sharing a space in a derelict apartment tower and set in what maybe the future, Ruins, Child is remarkable for its sweep, wit, and the sway of its liquid mosaic narrative, powered along by snatches of speech. “The woman is old, I hear children saying nearby, not in the way we consider all adults to be old, but really old, ancient, she is endless.” Using the lenses of urban infrastructure, botany, folklore, choreography, and collective listening, Ruins, Child creates a new ethnography of place and an ode both to communal ruins and to resistance. In the vivacity of their telling, Scodellaro’s heroines obscure authority, setting afoot a radical freeing-up. “Looseness, that is the thing people fear in a person (in women) and in objects.”
Giada Scodellaro was born in Naples, Italy and raised in the Bronx, New York. Her debut collection from Dorothy Project, Some of Them Will Carry Me—hailed as “stunning” (Renee Gladman) and “riveting, brilliant” (Alexandra Kleeman)—was one of The New Yorker best books of 2022.
Katie Kitamura’s most recent novel is Audition was a finalist for the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, it was one of President Obama’s Favorite Books of 2025. It was also a finalist for the Gotham Book Prize and longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. Her previous novel, Intimacies, was one of The New York Times’ 10 Best Books of 2021, was longlisted for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, and was one of President Obama’s Favorite Books of 2021. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Cullman Center Fellowship, the Rome Prize in Literature and the Prix Litteraire Lucien Barriere, Kitamura’s work has been translated into 27 languages and is being adapted for film. She teaches in the Creative Writing Program at New York University.
Event Details
Wednesday, April 8
7:00pm
Price
$5
Location
McNally Jackson Seaport
4 Fulton St
New York, NY 10038
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About S+4
McNally Jackson Books
Books. Some 65 thousand of them. History. More than 200 years of it. NYC’s beloved McNally Jackson’s Seaport outpost spans two floors of the historic Schermerhorn Row building, built in 1811. Windows overlook the cobblestones and armchairs anchor each room. Browse the shelves. Bring the kids to explore the big children’s section. Chat to the McNally staff and find your next great read.
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