Yxta Maya Murray in conversation with Jocelyn Saidenberg

LIVE! From City Lights celebrates author Yxta Maya Murray’s publication of “God Went Like That: A Novel.” “God Went Like That” follows the EPA report of federal agent Reyna Rodriguez who examines the ramifications of nuclear reactor meltdowns that occurred across three years. Drawing on an actual 2011 Department of Energy dossier that details the catastrophes and their ensuing public health fallout, Murray examines the human cost of governmental wrongdoing and environmental racism. Yxta Maya Murray is a novelist, art critic, playwright, social practice artist, and law professor. The author of nine books, her most recent are the story collection, “The World Doesn’t Work That Way, but It Could” (University of Nevada Press, 2020), and the novel, “Art Is Everything” (TriQuarterly Press, 2021). Her next work of nonfiction, “Artivism and the Law,” is in progress and will be published by Cornell University Press. She has won a Whiting Award, an Art Writer’s Grant, a grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Foundation/Money For Women, and was a 2021 New York City Arts Corps Grants co-grantee. She’s also been named a fellow at the Huntington Library for her work on radionuclide contamination in Simi Valley, California. You can purchase copies of “God Went Like That: A Novel” directly from City Lights here: https://citylights.com/god-went-like-that/ This was a virtual event hosted by Peter Maravelis and made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation: citylights.com/foundation.