Inspired by the artistic collaboration of Ed Kienholz and Nancy Reddin Kienholz and the SBMA exhibition Scenes from a Marriage: Ed & Nancy Kienholz, Parallel Stories examines what happens in fiction and life when artist couples work together. Celebrated author and recent winner of the Femina Prize for a foreign novel, Rachel Cusk returns to read from her Mann Booker Prize-nominated novel, Second Place. In this enigmatic and compelling tale, Cusk explores the complicated geometry of relationships—freedom and gender, art and suffering, ego and self-sacrifice, illusion and will. Her husband and artist, Siemon Scamell-Katz, joins her on the stage, along with their longtime friend award-winning author Andrew Winer, whose novel, The Marriage Artist, provides a provocative snapshot of contemporary marriage.

Together, they examine a certain anti-domestic stance, the closeness of comfort and control of our constructed selves, the way we enlist love in our perpetual search for meaning, and what we give up to create art.