Event – Detail

To write her novel Housemates about a young queer Philly photographer, which won The Athenaeum of Philadelphia’s Literary Award for Fiction, Eisenberg shadowed expert large-format photographer Jade Doskow. Housemates asks questions about Philadelphia visual and queer culture, the possibilities and dangers of artistic mentorship, what photography can offer as an art form, and what large-format photography specifically can teach us about how to see the world better. Doskow's photographic work and practice is deeply engaged with these questions and others pertaining to the built environment and questions considering humanity’s current relationship to concepts of wilderness and nature. Join us for a reading from Housemates, a presentation of Doskow's recent work, as well as a far-ranging conversation with Eisenberg and Doskow about novels, photography, and how both forms can offer us better ways of seeing our current moment. Doskow will also demonstrate her modern large-format camera on site.

The program will be followed by a book signing and reception.

Emma Copley Eisenberg is the author of the novel Housemates, which was a national bestseller and named a best book of the year by The Boston Globe, Kirkus Reviews, People, NBC, Them.Us, and Autostraddle as well as one of Electric Literature’s “Top 5 Novels of 2024." Housemates was also longlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist award and won the Athenaeum of Philadelphia’s Literary Award for Fiction. Her narrative nonfiction book, The Third Rainbow Girl, was a New York Times Notable Book and Editor’s Choice as well as a finalist for an Edgar Award, a Lambda Literary Award, and an Anthony Award, among other honors. Her fiction, essays, and criticism have appeared in Granta, Esquire, The New Republic, Lux, The Washington Post Magazine, VQR, and many other publications and she's been awarded residencies at Yaddo, the Millay Colony, and others. She lives in Philadelphia, where she co-founded Blue Stoop, a community hub for the literary arts. Her next book of fiction, Fat Swim, is forthcoming from Hogarth/Random House in April 2026.

Jade Doskow is a New York-based architectural and landscape photographer and artist known for her rigorously composed and eerily poetic images that examine the intersection of people, architecture, nature, and time. Working primarily in large format film and medium format digital, Doskow is best-known for her work Lost Utopias, Freshkills, Red Hook and ABC No Rio. She is the subject of the 2021 documentary Jade Doskow: Photographer of Lost Utopias; the film’s New York premiere was held at the International Center of Photography in October 2021 and has also screened at the Asheville Museum of Art and in film festivals internationally. Doskow’s work has been exhibited globally, including at the Museum of Modern Art, the Staten Island Museum, Cornell University, Asheville Museum of Art, Museum London, and many others. Doskow is on the faculty of CUNY / College of Staten Island, the School of Visual Arts and the International Center of Photography. She is a contributing environmental photojournalist to the New York Times and is the Photographer-in-Residence of Freshkills Park, New York City.

This program is sponsored by the Charles W. Stork Lecture Fund & the Francis and Jean Grebe Lecture Fund.