Images Change Us: On Writing, Art, and Intimacy

with Nicholson Baker, Sonja Livingston, and Sejal Shah

*Registration is open*

Thursday, October 15, 7:00-8:30 PM

For Adults

Writers & Books presents three nationally recognized authors with deep ties to Rochester who use visual art to inspire and inform their work. Whether it's an illustrative sentence in a story, a powerful polaroid, or a vivid portrait drawing, these writers rely on the "image" to engender understanding, empathy, and intimacy between readers and writers. Baker, Livingston, and Shah will share short works of nonfiction alongside an accompanying slideshow. A conversation moderated by Writers & Books Artistic Director, Tyler Barton, will follow, along with a book sale and signing. 

Sonja Livingston and Sejal Shah contributed photograph-inspired essays to Snapshots: An Album of Essay and Image (Bloomsbury), and Nicholson Baker's most recent book, Finding A Likeness: How I Got Somewhat Better At Art (Penguin, 2024), tells the story of his drawing journey. 

As Writers & Books celebrates the 25^th Anniversary of our "one book" city-wide reading program, Rochester Reads, we're bringing together great authors from Rochester's present and past to help us communicate the impact of this beloved annual tradition. Sonja Livingston's memoir Ghostbread, about her upbringing in Rochester, was selected as one of two 2026 Rochester Reads books. 

Nicholson Baker has written seventeen books, including The Mezzanine, Vox, Human Smoke, The Anthologist, Baseless, and an art book, The World on Sunday, in collaboration with his wife Margaret Brentano. Several of his books have been New York Times bestsellers, and he has won a National Book Critics Circle Award, a James Madison Freedom of Information Award, a Guggenheim fellowship, and the Herman Hesse Prize. Baker has two grown children; he and his wife live on the Penobscot River in Maine. During the COVID-19 Pandemic, Baker began teaching himself to draw portraits; his latest book Finding A Likeness: How I Got Somewhat Better At Art (Penguin, 2024), tells the story of his drawing journey. 

Sonja Livingston is the author of four books of creative nonfiction, including the award winning memoir, Ghostbread which has been adopted for classroom use around the country. Her work appears in outlets such as The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, and Salon. Honors include a NYFA Fellowship, an Iowa Review Award, an Arts & Letters Prize, a VanderMey Nonfiction Prize and an AWP Book Prize. Sonja is an associate professor and Director of the Creative Writing Program at Virginia Commonwealth University and teaches in the Postgraduate Program at Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Sejal Shah is the author of the debut short story collection How to Make Your Mother Cry: Fictions and the award-winning debut essay collection, This Is One Way to Dance, an NPR Best Book of 2020. Her work has appeared in Brevity, Conjunctions, the Guardian, the Kenyon Review, and Literary Hub, among others. In 2021, she was named an influential AAPI Leader by Good Morning America and ABC News. Sejal lives in Rochester, New York.

Program Accessibility

If you need accommodations due to a disability (e.g., sign language interpretation, closed captions, etc.) so that you can participate in any of our library's programs or events, please complete a request for disability accommodation or speak to a PPL staff member at (585) 340-8720 at least one week prior to the event. A staff member will reach out to you to confirm arrangements.