Writer Maggie Nelson and cultural critic Karen Tongson join musicologist Nate Sloan for a conversation on fame, gender, and the scrutiny faced by cultural icons. Drawing on Nelson’s provocative new book The Slicks: On Sylvia Plath and Taylor Swift, which traces the parallels between the two artists as targets of patriarchal efforts to disparage creative work by women, and Tongson’s work on queer viewership and popular culture, the discussion will explore how cultural and gendered narratives inform audience perceptions, critical reception, and artistic success.

Panelists:

• Maggie Nelson is the author of over a dozen acclaimed books, most recently The Slicks (2025) and Pathemata, Or, The Story of My Mouth (2025). Previous works include Like Love: Essays and Conversations (2024); the national bestseller On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint (2021); the international bestseller The Argonauts (2015; winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award); The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning (2011); Bluets (2009; adapted for the stage at the Royal Court Theatre of London); and The Red Parts: Autobiography of a Trial (2005). A recipient of a 2016 MacArthur “genius” fellowship, she is currently a Distinguished Professor of English at USC.
• Karen Tongson is the Barbra Streisand Professor of Contemporary Gender Studies at USC, where she also directs the Mellon-funded Consortium for Gender, Sexuality, Race and Public Culture. She is the award-winning author of Normporn: Queer Viewers and the TV that Soothes Us (2023), Why Karen Carpenter Matters (2019), and Relocations: Queer Suburban Imaginaries (2011). Her writing and cultural commentary have appeared in Slate, NPR, The Los Angeles Review of Books, PBS NewsHour, The Los Angeles Times, The AV Club, Entertainment Weekly, and KCRW’s Good Food among other venues. In 2019, she received the Lambda Literary Jeanne Córdova Award for Lesbian/Queer Nonfiction. She currently co-hosts the podcasts, The Gaymazing Race, and The Art of Grief.
• Nate Sloan (moderator) is a musicologist and performer who researches jazz, classical, and popular music. He is assistant professor of musicology at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music and co-host of the podcast Switched on Pop. Nate is co-author of Switched on Pop: How Popular Music Works and Why it Matters, has contributed articles about music to the New York Times, Musical Quarterly, and Journal of Musicology, and appeared as a music commentator for NPR, CBS, PBS, and MSNBC.

This panel is part of the 2026 Los Angeles Times Festival of Books at USC.