Auhtor, Margaret Hutton will read from and discuss her debut novel IF YOU LEAVE (October 21, 2025), sharing the inspiration for her main character as a visual artist, the thinking behind her epigraph by sculptor Anne Truitt, and reflections on her own desire to draw and paint. Hutton has been a student at WSS since 2021, joining a long history of writers who paint. But is visual art only another way of conveying a narrative? Or can it be a release from narrative, an attempt at something that eludes time, as Paul Valéry suggests: “Sensation is that which is transmitted directly, and avoids the detour and boredom of conveying a story”? A Q & A will follow with WSS Director Reem Bassous.

Hutton's Novel to be released on October 21, 2025: https://www.kramers.com/item/htJG23OV3XC8kE2S1FGxoA]