Unexploded Ordnance: A Conversation Between Ilan Stavans and Catharina Coenen

Description

Please join us in celebrating the publication of the groundbreaking memoir Unexploded Ordnance by Catharina Coenen, the Restless Books Immigrant Writing Prize winner, about three generations of women in Germany before, during, and after the Holocaust. The public conversation will address topics of memory and resistance in the face of fascism and unspeakable atrocities, as well as reflections on language, art, and biology.

Catharina Coenen is a German immigrant to northwestern Pennsylvania, where she teaches biology at Allegheny College in Meadville. Her creative work is forthcoming or has recently appeared in The Southampton Review Online, Appalachian Heritage, Christian Science Monitor, and elsewhere.

Ilan Stavans is the Lewis-Sebring Professor of Humanities, Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College, the publisher of Restless Books, and a consultant to the Oxford English Dictionary. His work, translated into twenty languages, has been adapted into film, TV, radio, and theater. His latest books are Sabor Judio: The Jewish-Mexican Cookbook and Conversations on Dictionaries: The Universe in a Book. He is a 2025-2026 fellow at the New York Public Library-Fordham University, finishing a book on Hispanic antisemitism.