Watershed Reading Series

media release: Chris Stedman's book IRL: Finding Realness, Meaning, and Belonging in Our Digital Lives is a captivating exploration of identity in the digital age. Interrogating the conventional distinctions between real and fake, online and offline, Stedman asks whether virtual spaces might offer new sites of experimentation and play and satisfy our longing for meaning and community. He explores a similar set of questions in his recent podcast series "Unread" (named one of the best podcasts of 2021 by Vulture), which revisits a friend's death and the cryptic digital breadcrumb trail that emerged in the aftermath. Stedman will be in conversation with the writer Meghan O'Gieblyn (author of God, Human, Animal, Machine) to discuss what it means to be authentic at a moment of virtual immersion and how digital technologies are both changing and affirming longstanding ideas about what it means to be human. Join us in person for this event on October 15, 2022 at 7:00pm. Free admission, limited seating.

Chris Stedman is a Minneapolis-based writer, speaker, and professor. He is the author of IRL (2020) and Faitheist (2012), and his narrative podcast Unread was released in June 2021. Chris has also written for publications including The Guardian, The Atlantic, BuzzFeed, Pitchfork, VICE, The LA Review of Books, The Rumpus, Catapult, LitHub, and The Washington Post. He currently teaches in the Department of Religion and Philosophy at Augsburg University, where he also serves as the inaugural Interreligious Resource Development Coordinator. Previously the founding director of the Yale Humanist Community and a fellow at Yale University, Chris also served as a humanist chaplain at Harvard University. In 2018 Augsburg selected him for their annual First Decade Award, which recognizes alumni "who have made significant progress in their professional achievements and contributions to the community" ten years after graduating.

Meghan O’Gieblyn is the author of God, Human, Animal, Machine (2021) and Interior States (2018), which won the 2018 Believer Book Award for nonfiction. Her essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, Wired, The Guardian, The New York Times, Bookforum, n+1, The Believer, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of three Pushcart Prizes and her work has been anthologized in The Best American Essays 2017 and The Contemporary American Essay (2021). She also writes the “Cloud Support” advice column for Wired.

The Watershed Reading Series is supported in part with additional funds from the Endres Mfg. Company Foundation, The Evjue Foundation, Inc., charitable arm of The Capital Times, the W. Jerome Frautschi Foundation, and the Pleasant T. Rowland Foundation.