Art and the Archive: A Party + Convo w/ The Believer, McSweeney’s Quarterly, and Transit Books

📚 Art and the Archive: Party + Conversation

Hosted by The Believer, McSweeney's Quarterly & Transit Books

Three beloved Bay Area literary institutions — The Believer, McSweeney's Quarterly, and Transit Books — are joining forces for an evening that blends stimulating conversation with a proper celebration. Taking place during Bay Area Book Festival weekend, this gathering brings together writers and thinkers to explore how the archive functions as far more than a dusty repository.

🎙️ The Conversation

Doors open at 5 PM, with the conversation kicking off at 5:30 PM.

Writers Ingrid Rojas Contreras and Leah Mensch, alongside oral historian Shanna Farrell, will dig into the role the archive plays in each of their current projects. Together, they'll wrestle with big questions:

• 🗂️ How do archives — personal, institutional, forgotten, or imagined — serve as living sites of inquiry, resistance, and reinvention?
• 🖊️ What does it mean for an artist to engage with history in the present moment?
• 🧠 How do archives shape narrative, memory, and identity?
• 🔄 In what ways can artists challenge, expand, or reimagine the archive itself?

All three participants are forthcoming contributors to The Believer, McSweeney's Quarterly, and Transit Books. After the discussion wraps up, stick around to enjoy drinks, snacks, and good vibes with fellow literary community members.

👩‍💼 Featured Participants

✍️ Ingrid Rojas Contreras

Born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia, Ingrid Rojas Contreras is the author of the memoir The Man Who Could Move Clouds — a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, and National Book Critics Circle Award, and a winner of the California Book Award. Her debut novel, Fruit of the Drunken Tree, earned the silver medal in First Fiction from the California Book Awards and was a New York Times editor's choice. Her essays and short stories have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Cut, Zyzzyva, and beyond. She has received fellowships and awards from the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, VONA, Hedgebrook, The Camargo Foundation, and the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture. Currently a Visiting Writer at Saint Mary's College, she lives in California.

✍️ Leah Mensch

An Arab Jewish artist and scholar, Leah Mensch's work centers on literary afterlives and ghost archives. Their writing appears in The Kenyon Review, North American Review, Guernica, Ninth Letter, and other publications. Their manuscript exploring the life and legacy of Kate Braverman — and the official and mythical materials that survive her — has received support from Tin House. Based in Tucson, Arizona, more of their work can be found at leahmensch.com.

🎙️ Shanna Farrell

An award-winning oral historian at UC Berkeley's Oral History Center, where she has worked since 2013, Shanna Farrell is the author of two books: A Good Drink: In Pursuit of Sustainable Spirits and Bay Area Cocktails: A History of Culture, Community and Craft.

🍹 Come for the conversation — stay for the community, drinks, and snacks!