Los Angeles POP-UP Cocktails with Melissa Broder & Petra Collins

This cocktail event will be hosted KK & Nick Wootton, Thursday, October 17, 2019.

An evening with Melissa Broder & Petra Collins, discussing The Pisces.

Seating at this event will be limited and available by making a donation to PEN America.

Melissa Broder is the author of the novel The Pisces, the essay collection So Sad Today, and four poetry collections, including Last Sext. Her next novel, Milk Fed, will be published by Scribner in 2021.

Broder has written for The New York Times, Elle.com, VICE, Vogue Italia, and New York Magazine’s The Cut. Poems appear in POETRY, The Iowa Review, Guernica, et al. She is the winner of a Pushcart Prize for poetry. She lives in Los Angeles

Petra Collins is one of the leading voices of the movement many are calling New-Wave Feminism, is a multi-talented artist who has positioned herself as a figure in the culture of Millenials and Generation Z. Shooting since the age of 15, her images are fueled by self-discovery and contemporary femininity which explore the complex intersection of life as a young woman online and off. Collins’s images offer an unflinching honesty, exploring the privacies and publicities of growing up as a woman at a moment when female bodies are ubiquitously hyper-mediated by Photoshop and social media. The Toronto-born and NYC based photographer and artist weaves through the worlds of art, fashion, film, music, and culture with a powerful aesthetic and highly original style that has become distinct and singular. 

As an artist, Collins has exhibited and worked with such institutions as The Museum of Modern Art, The Tate Modern, Miami & Hong Kong Art Basel, CONTACT Photo Festival, and galleries in New York, Los Angeles, and Paris. In the fashion world, Collins has worked as a photographer and subject in campaigns in couture, eyewear, and cosmetics for brands including Gucci, Fenty, Puma, Adidas, Bulgari, Calvin Klein, Nordstrom, Levi’s, and Stella McCartney. She frequently photographs covers and high-end editorial for publications such as U.S. Vogue, Elle, Teen Vogue, Dazed & Confused, Vogue Italia, CR Fashion Book, I-D, Garage, Wonderland, The New York Times, Purple Magazine, and many others across the fashion, art, and culture sphere. Collins is also an accomplished author, releasing her first art book Babe with Random House in 2015. She will next release a solo retrospective of her work with Rizzoli in the fall of 2017. On the film and music side, Collins has directed music videos and shot artwork for artists such as Selena Gomez, Lil Yachty, and Carly Rae Jepsen and has directed short films for brands such as Gucci and Adidas. In addition, Petra sometimes finds herself in front of the camera, appearing as the face of Gucci’s Fragrance alongside Dakota Johnson & Hari Nef and as one of Adidas’s Ambassadors and Faces alongside artists including Kanye West and Pharrell.

Petra also leads the Ardorous Collective, an artistic think-tank and team of female creative professionals whom work together in synchronization over their shared drive of critiquing and redefining the way in which we view being a woman in today’s world.

She has achieved such accolades ranging from Business of Fashion’s 500 People Shaping The Global Fashion Industry, Forbes 30 Under 30, Vogue’s 40 Creatives To Watch, and Dazed & Calvin Klein’s 100 Creatives Shaping Youth Culture.

PEN POP-UPs are unique gatherings, featuring writers, interdisciplinary artists, and cultural commentators in thought-provoking conversations, at private homes and other intimate settings throughout Greater Los Angeles.

Proceeds from these conversations help support PEN America’s ongoing efforts to defend free expression, to campaign for persecuted and imprisoned writers, and to promote literature and international cultural exchange.

For more information, contact Tracey Kardash at [email protected].