Immerse yourself in the literature of your life
Join THE WRITER’S GYM, a novel co-working space for writers like you and me
A quiet space to compose
We offer dedicated desks in two shared-use offices and plenty of community space in the gym to exercise your craft.
Marquee Event
What is involved in persuasion? What are the differences between what makes a person or an idea persuasive? What makes us resistant to persuasion? Write out some of your thoughts before we meet, so we can work from a well of shared ideas. The conversation will develop from there, and your questions will lead us through the series.
The Saxifrage Conversations were born from a desire to create a different kind of space for socializing, thinking, and connecting. Is there something you’ve been stuck on that you haven’t gotten to talk about? Something you’re curious about but you aren’t sure why? Something you want to discuss, but not necessarily for a particular end? Do you want a community with whom you will explore these questions over an extended period of time? In the Saxifrage Conversations, we gather to think rigorously and expansively about those concerns, obsessions, and curiosities outside of our professions that lend themselves to intellectual exploration. While formed by attendee interests, the free-wheeling discussions of our Conversations are structured as arcs of cumulative discussions on a theme determined in advance. We encourage participants to attend each meeting in a given series, as these conversations are designed to build on one another. Conversations are non-hierarchical and not focused around traditional disciplinary expertise. Instead, they are designed to foreground the inherently collaborative experience of learning. Participants are able to build the kind of shared knowledge that only emerges from slow, sustained conversation about things—sometimes random, sometimes silly, sometimes innocuous, always important—with consistent fellow thinkers. Attendees are expected to participate actively in conversation and leave their egos at the door. Conversations last about three hours, and usually end with a shared meal.
We’re thrilled to be partnering with the innovative Saxifrage Institute to offer up a cozy Saturday salon on Oct 10th from 3-6pm that’ll transport you back to the turn-of-the-18th-century Paris right here at The Writer’s Gym, and they’ve graciously extended invitations to all TWG members to join—oohlala!
Events in the Rearview
Join us for Pride Month to discuss The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson, a “fiercely provocative and intellectually audacious memoir that focuses on motherhood, love and gender fluidity” and one of the Best Queer Nonfiction Since 2000, according to Kirkus Reviews.
We’ll meet June 18th and July 16th at The Writer’s Gym to discuss this genre-bending memoir.
Afterlives is a desktop documentary that critically engages with the historical and digital traces of extremist propaganda, questioning how images of violence circulate, mutate, and persist. The film moves between virtual investigations and real-world encounters with artists, activists, and researchers who seek to resist the toxic effects of such media. At its core is the figure of Medusa—a victim of violence whose gaze turned viewers to stone—invoked as a symbol of both the dangers and transformative potential of looking. From museum archives to AI-generated reconstructions, the film explores how power structures, spanning from the colonial past to the digital age, shape the way we see and remember violence. Can we ever truly look without being complicit? And is there another way to care?
Awards:
Doclisboa International Film Festival 2025, Best First Feature Award
BFI London Film Festival, Stockholm International Film Festival
Milano Filmmaker Festival, Busto Arsizio Film Festival
This screening will be followed by a Q&A with Kevin B. Lee and two passionate admirers of his artistic endeavors since their early theatrical collaborations at Williams College, Paul Ham & Grant Koo.
Read Grant’s gonzo review in The JZJ, but also what other admittedly more established critics are praising about the film:
- BFI London Review: Kevin B. Lee’s Debut Feature Afterlives Interrogates Terrorist Propaganda | Savina Petkova | The Film Stage (https://thefilmstage.com/bfi-london-review-kevin-b-lees-debut-feature-afterlives-interrogates-terrorist-propaganda/)
“(…) Afterlives is a dedicated, reflective documentary, the bell of its urgency ringing far into the futures of images.” - Critique: Afterlives | David Katz | Cineuropa (https://cineuropa.org/fr/newsdetail/485073/)
“(…) Visceral and straightforwardly emotional… with eerie formal poetry in copious quantities.” - Notes from London Film Festival (III.) | Joel Whitaker | Cinema Year Zero (https://www.cinemayearzero.com/p/notes-from-london-film-festival-iii?utm_source=publication-search)
“Lee has been far ahead of the curve for years in terms of how documentaries can streamline the conveyance of information, this film feels like a natural development of his style and voice.” - AFTERLIVES | Giuseppe Di Salvatore | Filmexplorer (https://www.filmexplorer.ch/detail/afterlives/)
“(…) Afterlives is a kick-off film, as a starting point of a critical discussion that needs to be continued, as a temporary cinema crystallization that deconstructs the dynamic of spectacle in order to open up a restless, filmic territory where affective intelligence reactivates media theory.”
About Kevin B. Lee
Kevin B. Lee is a filmmaker and educator who has produced over 360 video essays exploring film and media. His work has screened at the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of the Moving Image, and International Film Festival Rotterdam, and has appeared on platforms including The New York Times and MUBI. His award-winning Transformers: The Premake introduced the “desktop documentary” format and was named one of the best documentaries of 2014 by Sight & Sound. He is the Locarno Film Festival Professor for the Future of Cinema and the Audiovisual Arts at Università della Svizzera italiana (USI).
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