Book Talk: “Karen Blixen’s Search for Self: The Making of ‘Out of Africa'” with Patti Marxsen – WAITLIST ONLY

Seats are limited and we are at capacity. You are welcome to still RSVP and show up, though this will put you on a waitlist. Those who have already registered will get seating first. After registered guests are seated, there may or may not be seating left.

Camden Public Library warmly welcomes biographer and independent scholar Patti M. Marxsen for a book talk on her recent biography, Karen Blixen’s Search for Self: The Making of ‘Out of Africa’, on Thursday, June 4 at 6:00 PM. This event will take place in the library’s beautiful and historic Reading Room. Books will be for sale from Owl & Turtle with an opportunity for signing.

In Karen Blixen’s Search for Self, Patti M. Marxsen presents a twenty-first-century reconsideration of the iconic 1937 memoir Out of Africa by Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen).

This “book about a book” draws on seasoned historical perspectives of European colonial activities in early twentieth-century Africa as it engages Blixen’s letters, tales, speeches, interviews, the photographic record of her various personas, memoir literature of others who knew her, and three generations of scholarship, including pointed postcolonial critiques. Mixing scholarly research with personal reflection, Marxsen recounts an inspiring tale of a writer’s evolution, along with thoughtful analysis of the art and craft of memoir.

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Patti M. Marxsen is an essayist, biographer, independent scholar, and translator (FR>EN) whose writings have been published in the USA, Europe, and the Caribbean. She is the author of three biographical studies, two essay collections, a collection of short fiction, and numerous articles and reviews related to visual art and Haitian literature.

Like her studies of Helene Schweitzer and Jacques Roumain, Marxsen’s most recent focus involves a mid-twentieth-century vision of Africa through the life of a complex, European/Europeanized figure. Karen Blixen (aka Isak Dinesen) is the author of one of the most famous memoirs of the 20th century: Out of Africa. Her complex life, her evolution as a writer, and her contested legacy form the subject of Marxsen’s thought-provoking and multi-faceted analysis found in Karen Blixen’s Search for Self: The Making of ‘Out of Africa’ (LSU Press, 2026).

After living in Switzerland and a decade-long involvement with the Geneva Writers Group, Marxsen returned to the coast of Maine in 2021. It was here that her professional writing life began in 1989, when she covered the arts for The Camden Herald.