Out of Place: New Novels about Travel, Restlessness, and Home

P&T Knitwear is pleased to welcome Roohi Choudhry, author of, Karen Outen author of , & Cleyvis Natera, author of , for a panel on travel, restlessness, and home within their novels.

As discourse around place and displacement becomes increasingly fraught, the focus of this conversation will be on how ideas of searching and belonging come up in both leisure travel and migration within their novels. They will also be discussing how writers tackle representations of place, and how we address both restlessness and rootedness in these narratives of movement.

• This is a ticketed in-store event with limited amphitheater-style seating.
• Doors open at 6:30pm.
• Books will be available for purchase at the event.
• Cost of a $5 general admission ticket can be applied towards your purchase.
• The talk will be followed by a book signing. Books signed at P&T Knitwear events must be purchased from P&T Knitwear.
• If you would like a signed copy and cannot attend the event, we're happy to take your pre-order. We ship most places!
• We encourage all guests to wear masks.

ABOUT THE PANELISTS:

Roohi Choudhry was born in Pakistan, grew up in southern Africa, and now calls Brooklyn home. She is the author of Outside Women (University Press of Kentucky, 2025), named one of the most anticipated feminist books of 2025 by Ms. Magazine and described as “riveting… an incisive story of how change happens” by Publishers’ Weekly. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan and is the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship and residencies at Hedgebrook and Djerassi. Her stories and essays have appeared in Ploughshares, Callaloo, Longreads, Poets & Writers, and the Kenyon Review. She has worked as a researcher in criminal justice reform and public health, wrote for the United Nations, and facilitates creative writing workshops for community organizations. Learn more at roohichoudhry.com.

Karen Outen’s debut novel Dixon, Descending (Dutton, 2024) was a Library Journal Editor’s Pick and was longlisted for both the Crook’s Corner Book Prize and the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award. Her fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train, The North American Review, Essence, and in the anthologies Where Love is Found and Mother Knows: 24 Tales of Motherhood (both from Washington Square Press). Her essays have been published in Scoundrel Times, Lit Hub, Electric Lit, and the anthology From Curlers to Chainsaws: Women and their Machines. She received a 2018 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award, a Careers in the Making Fellowship from the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Michigan, and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts. She has taught writing at the University of Michigan, where she earned an MFA, and at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.

Cleyvis Natera is an award-winning author, essayist, and critic. Her debut novel, Neruda on the Park, was a New York Times Editor's Choice and was awarded a Silver Medal by the International Latino Book Awards for Best First Book of Fiction. Her work has appeared in Kirkus, The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, Bon Appétit, TIME, The Washington Post, USA TODAY, Pleiades, The Kenyon Review, Aster(ix) and Kweli Journal, among others. Natera has received awards, fellowships and artist residencies by the Vermont Studio Center, PEN America, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Hermitage Artist Retreat, among others. She was the recipient of the prestigious Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference 2024 Toni Morrison Fiction Fellowship. She is currently a Fulbright Specialist. She joined Montclair State University in the fall of 2024 as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing where she currently leads the development of a M.F.A. in Bilingual Creative Writing. Natera is also part of the creative writing faculty at Barnard College of Columbia University andThe New School M.F.A. program. Natera’s second novel is The Grand Paloma Resort.

Also check out other Arts events in New York, Literary Art events in New York, Workshops in New York.