Join a vital, enlightening conversation with celebrated filmmaker and writer Mo Ogrodnik as she launches her debut novel Gulf in conversation with fellow author Charlotte Rogan.
Copies of Gulf will be available for sale at this event.
About Gulf
Told through a prism of female voices, this cinematic debut follows five women with vastly different origins — from the Philippines, to Ethiopia, to New York City — whose lives bring them to the Arabian Gulf, where they collide with devastating and profound consequences.
Dounia, a young Saudi mother, finds herself alienated in a desolate, post-weather, air-conditioned modernist box and decides to rebel against all forms of domesticity. Flora, a Filipina domestic worker haunted by the flood that claimed her infant’s life, navigates the perils of her boss’s insurrection. Zeinah, a Syrian woman, seeks love within the confines of her arranged marriage to a jihadist and finds herself joining the female morality police. Justine, a white American curator, reckons with her own violence and ethical limitations when her life intersects with Eskedare, a spirited and defiant Ethiopian teenager whose dreams have dead-ended in the Gulf. Bold moves unlock vital consequences, each woman’s journey confronting us with our own capacity for cruelty, rebellion, resilience—and hope.
Written with unsettling intimacy and determined empathy, Gulf exposes the stark realities of what happens when a woman’s agency is stripped away and asks how far we will go in order to survive.
***
Mo Ogrodnik is a filmmaker, writer, and professor in the film department at NYU. She was the associate dean of the arts for NYU in Abu Dhabi and the director of FIND, a creative lab exploring the transnational heritage of the UAE. She’s served as a mentor for the Sundance Labs in Jordan and received fellowships from Yaddo and MacDowell.
Charlotte Rogan spent 25 years as a closet writer before her first novel was published in 2012. The Lifeboat was nominated for The Guardian first book award, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and the Goldsboro Books and Historical Writers Association debut historical fiction prize. It was included on The Huffington Post’s 2015 list of “21 books from the last 5 years that every woman should read” and has been translated into 26 languages. Her second novel,Now and Again, continued to explore issues of morality and justice. Rogan attended Greens Farms Academy back when it was a tiny girls’ school, studied architecture at Princeton University, and worked for a large construction firm before turning her creative energies to writing.
***
The Library is pleased to be able to offer free programs and events through the generous donations of patrons like you. Please consider giving to the Library so that we can continue to offer events like this one. Your donation is tax deductible. Donate Now!
