Thursday, January 19 at 7:00 PM
Join us for a special screening, conversation, and book signing featuring Predator: A Memoir, a Movie, an Obsession author Ander Monson and the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger science fiction classic Predator on the big screen. Ander Monson will be in conversation with Carmen Giménez, publisher and director of Graywolf Press.
Ticket + Book Bundle pre-sale available until January 10 courtesy Magers & Quinn Booksellers. Pre-ordered books will be available for pickup on the night of the event.
Co-presented by Graywolf Press and MSP Film Society.
About Predator: A Memoir, a Movie, an Obsession
In his first memoir, Ander Monson guides readers through a scene-by-scene exploration of the 1987 film Predator, which he has watched 146 times. Some fighters might not have time to bleed, but Monson has the patience to consider their adventure, one frame at a time. He turns his obsession into a lens through which he poignantly examines his own life, formed by mainstream, White, male American culture. Between scenes, Monson delves deeply into his adolescence in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and Riyadh, his role as a father and the loss of his own mother, and his friendships with men bound by the troubled camaraderie depicted in action and sci-fi blockbusters. Along with excursions into the conflicted pleasures of cosplay and first-person shooters, he imagines himself beside the poet and memoirist Paul Monette, who wrote the novelization of the movie while his partner was dying of AIDS.
A sincere and playful book that lovingly dissects the film, Predator also offers questions and critiques of masculinity, fandom, and their interrelation with acts of mass violence. In a stirring reversal, one chapter exposes Monson through the Predator’s heat-seeking vision, asking him, “What do you know about the workings of the hidden world?” As Monson brings us into the brilliant depths of the film and its universe, the hunt begins.
About Ander Monson
Ander Monson’s most recent books are Predator: A Memoir, a Movie, an Obsession (nonfiction); I Will Take the Answer (nonfiction); and The Gnome Stories (fiction), published by Graywolf Press. He edits the magazine DIAGRAM, Essay Daily, New Michigan Press, the Assessment Matters Institute, and March Xness, among other projects, and teaches at the University of Arizona.
About Carmen Giménez
CARMEN GIMÉNEZ joined Graywolf as Publisher and Director in August 2022. She is the founder and former publisher of Noemi Press and was professor of English at Virginia Tech. A queer Latinx poet, she is the author of six poetry collections, including Be Recorder, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. She is also the author of the lyric memoir Bring Down the Little Birds, which won an American Book Award. She has been awarded fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Howard Foundation, and the Hermitage Foundation.
About Graywolf Press
Graywolf Press is a leading independent publisher committed to the discovery and energetic publication of twenty-first century American and international literature. We champion outstanding writers at all stages of their careers to ensure that adventurous readers can find underrepresented and diverse voices in a crowded marketplace. We believe works of literature nourish the reader’s spirit and enrich the broader culture, and that they must be supported by attentive editing, compelling design, and creative promotion.
About MSP Film Society
MSP Film Society's mission is to inform and transform individuals and communities through the power of great cinema. MSP Film has spent the last six decades celebrating a myriad of cultures, countries and issues of collective local and global concern through film, believing in the potency of storytelling to move people, and to move people to action. Our widely recognized Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival, film series, and daily screenings at The Main Cinema represent a diversity of perspectives and 100+ cultures and countries each year, providing unique platforms for learning and action through film and conversation.