Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn — I Have This Thing for Flowers: Essays on the Roots of Relationships - with Gabrielle Lucille Fuentes — at Union Market
Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn brings her new essay collection, *I Have This Thing for Flowers: Essays on the Roots of Relationships*, to Politics and Prose at Union Market for an evening of conversation and reflection. The book begins with a personal upheaval: six months before her wedding, Sawchyn’s fiancé ended their engagement. Reeling and newly without insurance, she married her friend Sarah as a practical arrangement, and the two moved in together during the pandemic. As they tended a garden and built a life side by side, their marriage of convenience gradually became a marriage of genuine love. Using flowers as a recurring metaphor drawn from science, art, and mythology, Sawchyn explores how beauty and love alike depend on careful tending, and she reflects on topics as varied as motherhood, perfumery, and scientific illustration while collecting the significant relationships of her life like specimens in an herbarium.
Sawchyn, a writer, editor, and educator based in Western North Carolina, is the former Editor-in-Chief of *The Rumpus* and has held fellowships from the Kenyon Review and the Sewanee Writers’ Conferences. Her first essay collection, *A Fish Growing Lungs*, was a finalist for *The Believer* Book Awards. For this event, she will be joined in conversation by Gabrielle Lucille Fuentes, author of *The Sleeping World*, *Are We Ever Our Own*, and the forthcoming *Clear Water*, which Flatiron Books will publish on November 3. Fuentes has received fellowships from Yaddo, Hedgebrook, the Millay Colony, Lighthouse Works, and other residency programs, and she is an associate professor at the University of Maryland.
Date: Thursday, August 20, 2026
Time: 7:00 pm
Venue: Politics and Prose at Union Market, 1324 4th Street NE, Washington, DC 20002
Admission: This event is free, with first come, first served seating.
Lineup: Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn in conversation with Gabrielle Lucille Fuentes
Featured book: *I Have This Thing for Flowers: Essays on the Roots of Relationships*, available for preorder in hardcover at $28.99, ISBN 9781250397614, with a publish date of August 4, 2026
Accessibility: To request accommodations or ask about accessibility, email events@politics-prose.com, ideally one week before the event date; requests will be accommodated up until the time of the event.