The Mytilenean Debate & When I'm Gone Look For Me In the East
Presented in partnership with Forward Theater Company, Amy Quan Barry will discuss her new play, The Mytilenean Debate and her newest novel, When I'm Gone Look For Me in the East. Barry will be joined by performers from the production for a live preview scene reading.
About The Mytilenean Debate:
Latimer is a successful heart surgeon. When his much younger girlfriend, Nina, unexpectedly gets pregnant, Latimer must break the news to his grown daughter, who is struggling to start a family of her own. Written by poet, award-winning author, and Forward Theater Writer in Residence Quan Barry, The Mytilenean Debate raises questions about race, legacy, and the difficult issues couples face as they navigate the world both together and as individuals.
The full performance of The Mytilenean Debate will take place in the Playhouse at Overture Center. For complete details and ticket information, visit: https://forwardtheater.com/show/the-mytilenean-debate.
About When I'm Gone Look For Me in the East:
From the acclaimed author of We Ride Upon Sticks comes a luminous novel that moves across a windswept Mongolia, as estranged twin brothers make a journey of duty, conflict, and renewed understanding. Tasked with finding the reincarnation of a great lama—a spiritual teacher who may have been born anywhere in the vast Mongolian landscape—the young monk Chuluun sets out with his identical twin, Mun, who has rejected the monastic life they once shared. Their relationship will be tested on this journey through their homeland as each possesses the ability to hear the other’s thoughts.
Proving once again that she is a writer of immense range and imagination, Quan Barry carries us across a terrain as unforgiving as it is beautiful and culturally varied, from the western Altai mountains to the eerie starkness of the Gobi Desert to the ancient capital of Chinggis Khaan. As their country stretches before them, questions of faith—along with more earthly matters of love and brotherhood—haunt the twins. Are our lives our own, or do we belong to something larger? When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East is a stunningly far-flung examination of our individual struggle to retain our convictions and discover meaning in a fast-changing world, as well as a meditation on accepting what simply is.
Quan Barry
Quan Barry is the author of eight books of fiction and poetry including When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East; We Ride Upon Sticks, winner of the 2020 ALA Alex Award; and She Weeps Each Time You’re Born. Her most recent poetry collection, Auction, was named one of the five best collections of 2023 by the New York Times. Her first play, The Mytilenean Debate, premiered in 2022. She is the Lorraine Hansberry Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.