A Conjunctions Reading by Rikki Ducornet and David Shields

DAVID SHIELDS is the internationally bestselling author of 20 books, including Reality Hunger (named one of the best books of 2010 by more than 30 publications), The Thing about Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead (New York Times bestseller), Black Planet (finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award), and Other People: Takes and Mistakes (Knopf, 2017). James Franco’s film of I Think You're Totally Wrong: A Quarrel was also released in 2017. The recipient of Guggenheim and NEA fellowships, Shields has published essays and stories in the New York Times Magazine, Harper's, Esquire, the Yale Review, Salon, Slate, McSweeney's, and the Believer. His work has been translated into 20 languages. 

The author of nine novels, three collections of short fiction, two books of essays, and five books of poetry, RIKKI DUCORNET has received both a Lannan Literary Fellowship and the Lannan Literary Award For Fiction. She has received the Bard College Arts and Letters award and, in 2008, an Academy Award in Literature. Her work is widely published abroad. Recent exhibitions of her paintings include the solo show Desirous at the Pierre Menard Gallery in Cambridge, Massachusetts (2007), and the group shows O Reverso do Olhar in Coimbra, Portugal (2008); El Umbral Secreto at the Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende, Santiago, Chile (2009); Las Llavas del Deseo, Fundacion Camaleon Art, Biblioteca Nacional, San Jose, Costa Rica (2016); and La Chasse à l’Objet du Désir, Galerie Espace, Quebec (2014). She has illustrated books by Jorge Luis Borges, Robert Coover, Forrest Gander, Kate Bernheimer, Joanna Howard, and Anne Waldman, among others. Her collected papers, including prints and drawings, are in the permanent collection of the Ohio State University Rare Books and Manuscripts Library. Her artwork is in the permanent collections of the Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende; McMaster Museum of Art, Hamilton, Ontario; and Biblioteque Nationale, Paris.