From Literature to Theater: Fun Home author and Broadway star 

up next for Winter Words

Aspen, CO (January 19, 2016) – For a small mountain town, Aspen is well known for its rich literary and theater traditions. These worlds will collide on January 27th as cartoonist Alison Bechdel joins Broadway star Beth Malone for the second Winter Words event of the year. Bechdel’s bestselling graphic memoir Fun Home was adapted into a 2015 Tony Award-winning musical starring Beth Malone as the adult Alison. Their on-stage conversation, hosted by literary non-profit Aspen Words, will be a kind of homecoming for Malone, who spent her 20’s in Aspen working at the Crystal Palace dinner theater and later performing with Theatre Aspen.  

Alison Bechdel, a 2014 MacArthur “Genius Grant” awardee, is known for her comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, which ran in syndication from 1983 to 2008 and was considered one of the earliest ongoing representations of lesbians in popular culture.  Her graphic memoir Fun Home was Time magazine’s Best Book of 2006 and is now assigned reading on dozens of college campuses. It took Bechdel close to two decades following her father’s death to write the critically acclaimed memoir, which is centered on her relationship with her closeted gay father.  The theater adaptation of Fun Home was a finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in Drama and won five Tony Awards in 2015. Malone has been part of Fun Home through most of its formative stages and was nominated for the 2015 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical.

While the play was in initial rehearsals at the Public Theater, Malone met Bechdel—her real-life character—for the first time, remarking: “It was impossible to hide from the fact that she was human and the events in our play were mere re-imaginings of her actual and often very intense experiences.” Their Winter Words event will explore this process of transposing real life to literature and eventually the stage. 

EVENT DETAILS

Wednesday, January 27 at 6pm | Doors open at 5:30pm

Book signing to follow

Paepcke Auditorium on the campus of the Aspen Institute

1000 N. 3rd Street, Aspen, CO 81611

General admission tickets: $20 in advance at aspenshowtix.com or at the door. 

More information at aspenwords.org. 

Questions or requests for interviews can be directed to: 

Caroline Tory

Program Associate of Marketing & Communications

Aspen Words | The Aspen Institute

[email protected]

Phone: 970-925-3122 ext 3#

Click here to download the press release.

About Winter Words

In its 19the season, Winter Words is a chance to meet your favorite author or discover your next beloved book at five evening events held throughout the ski season. From poetry and historical fiction, to graphic memoir and investigative journalism, the 2016 series will take you beyond the book with one of the most diverse and Pulitzer Prize-rich line-ups to date. In addition to Alison Bechdel & Beth Malone (Jan 27), speakers include Juan Felipe Herrera (Jan 12), Adam Johnson (Feb 13), Geraldine Brooks & Tony Horwitz (Mar 15), and Sandra Cisneros (Apr 5). 

Aspen Words (formerly the Aspen Writers’ Foundation) was founded in Aspen in 1976 as a cutting edge poetry conference and literary magazine. Today Aspen Words (AW) is one of the nation’s leading literary centers and a stage for the world’s most prominent authors. AW programs employ literature as a tool for provoking thought, broadening perspectives, fostering connections, inspiring creativity, and giving voice. Since 2009, AW has partnered with the Aspen Institute, underscoring the highest humanistic ideals of Aspen founder Walter Paepcke: to better understand human challenges by cultivating one’s inner life through the exchange of words, stories, and ideas. AW’s mission is to encourage writers, inspire readers, and connect people through the power of stories.

The Aspen Institute is an educational and policy studies organization based in Washington, DC. Its mission is to foster leadership based on enduring values and to provide a nonpartisan venue for dealing with critical issues. The Institute is based in Washington, DC; Aspen, CO; and on the Wye River on Maryland's Eastern Shore. It also has offices in New York City and an international network of partners. For more information, visit www.aspeninstitute.org.