The U.S. Embassy Literature Series: Emily Nemens

On December 5, Emily Nemens reads from her debut novel “The Cactus League” and talks with Musa Okwonga about baseball and its impact on American society, identity, fan culture, literature, and the Picador Guest Professorship. Conversation in English. Emily Nemens the current Picador Guest Professor for Literature at the University of Leipzig. Her debut novel, The Cactus League (FSG 2020, Picador 2021) was called “a wonderful, necessary read to remind you how infinite and wild other people can be” (The Brooklyn Rail). It was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and named one of the best books of the year by NPR. Her fiction has also appeared in Gettysburg Review, n+1, Iowa Review, and Blackbird. Emily spent a decade editing literary quarterlies, including The Paris Review, which won the American Society of Magazine Editors’ Award for Fiction under her tenure, and The Southern Review. She teaches at the Unterberg Poetry Center at the 92NY in New York and is the sports/senior editor for the literary travel magazine Stranger’s Guide.