Smithereens: reading and remembering 'The Lady in a Fur Wrap'
Smithereens: reading and remembering 'The Lady in a Fur Wrap'
College of Arts School of Modern Languages and Cultures Stirling Maxwell Centre
Date: Thursday 22 February 2024
Time: 17:00 - 18:00
Venue: TalkLab (University of Glasgow Library, level 3) + Zoom (see below)
Category: Public lectures
Speaker: Susan McCallum-Smith, author; Respondent: Hilary Macartney, University of Glasgow
Website: https://uofglasgow.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYpcumorD4qE9Tjg4JGizJEpftwD3kD2LZD
Document: Susan McCallum-Smith event poster
Susan McCallum-Smith gives a reading from her essay-memoir Smithereens, published in 2014. A chance encounter in a New York gallery opens a portal into a Glasgow childhood, that becomes a search for meaning and class identity through a work of art.
Susan McCallum-Smith was born and raised in Pollokshaws, Glasgow, on the outskirts of Pollok Park, and now lives in Dunblane. She is a graduate of Glasgow University in Film, Television and Theatre Studies and has postgraduate degrees from Johns Hopkins University and the Bennington Writing Seminars. A writer and reviewer, her work has been recognised by Best American Essays and awarded a Pushcart Prize. Her story collection, Slipping the Moorings, was published by Entasis Press in 2009, and she received a Creative Writing Fellowship from the United States National Endowment for the Arts. She has appeared in many publications, including AGNI, The Southern Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and the Scottish Review of Books.
This event, co-hosted by the Stirling Maxwell Research Project, is one of several planned over the coming year which will offer different approaches to the internationally known 16th-century Spanish portrait the Lady in a Fur Wrap, by Alonso Sánchez Coello, now in Glasgow Life Museums’ collection. They follow on from a multidisciplinary research project Unwrapping an Icon, led by the University of Glasgow, in collaboration with Glasgow Museums and National Trust for Scotland and in association with the Prado Museum, Madrid.
The event will also be livestreamed and recorded: https://uofglasgow.zoom.us/s/82450025090.