A Conversation with Amy Shearn

Amy Shearn is the award-winning author of Animal Instinct, Dear Edna Sloane, Unseen City, The Mermaid of Brooklyn, and How Far Is the Ocean From Here. She teaches creative writing at the Yale Writers' Workshop, Sackett Street Writers Workshop, and Writing Co-Lab, an experimental cooperative she co-founded. Amy's work has appeared in many publications including The New York Times Modern Love column, Slate, Poets & Writers, and O: The Oprah Magazine.

About the theme A/I: Artistic Intelligence & Artificial Intelligence, she said, “When I was writing Animal Instinct, just a few years ago, the idea that my character might fall in love with an AI seemed speculative. Obviously, I thought, if a person were obsessed with AI, it indicated some deep psychic wound. And yet here we are. I know we're meant to keep up with technology as it progresses, but I can't help feeling deeply troubled by our culture's enthusiasm for outsourcing thought, creativity, and feeling. I just hope we won't willingly give away that which makes us human.”

This program is brought to you by Artswego and the Department of English and Creative Writing