#  Shapes of Psychedelic Literature: A Conversation with "Elastic" Magazine 

 



    ![Elastic Volume Two Cover](/sites/g/files/omnuum4936/files/styles/hwp_5_4__480x385/public/2026-08/flat-isolated_issue2-f.jpeg?h=46b485dc&itok=-Zghtek4) 

 



 

####  calendar\_today Date and Time 

 **September 15, 2026** 

 06:00PM - 07:30PM EDT 

 



 

### [PSYCHEDELICS IN SOCIETY & CULTURE](https://mahindrahumanities.harvard.edu/psychedelics-society-and-culture)

### Speakers: Venita Blackburn, Samantha Hunt, and Laura van den Berg  
Moderator: Hillary Brenhouse

#### About the Event

In celebration of *Elastic* magazine's newly released second volume, join us for a conversation about the possibilities of psychedelic literature—writing that bends time, genre, and perspective; blurs waking and dreaming life; and otherwise expands beyond imagined boundaries to render our twisted present and experiences that resist straightforward or linear description. How might writing that is speculative, surreal, or formally unruly access the deepest kind of realism? What becomes possible when we move beyond the narrative shapes we've inherited?

*Elastic* is an award-winning print magazine of psychedelic art and literature. Its second volume, the Interspecies Issue, launched this year with support from Harvard's Psychedelics in Society and Culture program. The issue features fifty-two contributing writers and visual artists who circle the porousness of the self, ecological entanglements, and how strange and sublime it is to be a living thing among other living things.

#### About the Speakers

**Hillary Brenhouse** is the founding editor-in-chief and publisher of *Elastic* magazine, which debuted in April 2025. She was previously the editor-in-chief of *Guernica* magazine and the editorial director of Bold Type Books. Her writing has appeared in *The New York Times Magazine*, *The New Yorker*, and elsewhere.

**L****aura van den Berg** is the author of six works of fiction, most recently the novel *State of Paradise*, and an *Elastic* contributing editor. She teaches fiction at Harvard University and lives in the Hudson Valley. Her next novel, *Ring of Night*, is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

**Samantha Hunt** is the author of four books of fiction, including *The Seas* and *The Dark Dark*. She is also the author of *The Unwritten Book*, a collection of essays about death and literature. Hunt is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her story "Fallen Women" was published in *Elastic* No. 1: The Dying Issue, which was nominated for the National Magazine Award for Fiction.

**Venita Blackburn** is author of the novel *Dead in Long Beach, California* (2024), which was longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, as well as the story collections *Black Jesus and Other Superheroes* (2018) and *How to Wrestle a Girl* (2021). She teaches creative writing at Fresno State University and is the founder and president of Live, Write, an organization that offers free creative writing workshops to communities of color.



 

 



 

 See also:- [ Psychedelics in Society and Culture ](/event-series/psychedelics-society-and-culture)
- [ Public ](/event-type/public)
 
 

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