Join SI and do you read me?! for an evening with Moshtari Hilal to celebrate her book, UGLINESS. Hilal will discuss with Céline Semaan, author of A Woman is a School and co-founder of Slow Factory, how power and beauty join forces to determine who is considered “ugly.”

Hamburg-based artist and writer Moshtari Hilal has written a touching, intimate, and highly political book. Dense body hair, crooked teeth, and big noses: Hilal uses a broad cultural lens to question norms of appearance – ostensibly her own, but in fact everyone’s. She writes about beauty salons in Kabul as a backdrop to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, Darwin’s theory of evolution, German antisemitism, Kim Kardashian, and a utopian place in the shadow of her nose. With a profound mix of essay, poetry, her own drawings, and cultural and social histories of the body, Hilal explores notions of repulsion and attraction, taking the reader into the most personal of realms to put self-image to the test. Why are we afraid of ugliness?⁠

Please RSVP to rsvp@nyc.doyoureadme.de.