Katie Pruden, Author at Public Seminar

An interview with author Lana Lin on reimagining Gertrude Stein’s modernist landmark

Upon its publication in 1933, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas launched author Gertrude Stein into commercial success and placed her as a crucial figure of modernism. Under the guise of an "autobiography," Stein wrote about herself and the Paris salon scene through the voice of her lifelong partner, Alice ...

Literature

Some Random Person in Grand Rapids

In Natasha Stagg’s new novel, a woman reflects on the struggle of telling the truth about one particular teenage summer

May 13, 2026 • by Katie Pruden

The author Natasha Stagg has been described by Bookforum as a “cool person in downtown New York who writes about the same.” Her first novel, Surveys (2016), and her two essay collections, Sleeveless (2019) and Artless (2023), deal with a perception-obsessed internet culture. But her latest novel, Grand Rapids (Semiotexte, ...