Interested in the intersection of Judaism, psychedelics, and ancestral trauma? Join Portland authors Seth Lorinczi and Vanessa Veselka for a very special discussion of Lorinczi’s new book Death Trip: A Post-Holocaust Psychedelic Memoir.
The story of a marriage, a deep dive into Portland’s psychedelic underground, and an investigation into the impact of ancestral trauma, Death Trip is most of all a journey to confront the past in order to make sense of the present.
Haunted by the omissions in his family’s backstory, Seth Lorinczi is just trying to get through life. But when a midlife crisis threatens his marriage and an open-minded therapist suggests he try MDMA, he learns just how trippy a search for meaning can get. Eventually, the quest to exhume his family’s ghosts will take him halfway around the world.
Author Reading and discussion with book signing to follow
Free, all ages, please register and consider making a donation to EJC at checkout.
Advance Praise for Death Trip:
“In this deeply researched, beautifully written, and passionately lived memoir of intergenerational trauma, Lorinczi leads the reader on a double journey: Into the harrowing bloodlands of 20th-century fascism and, almost as scary, the miasmic inner life of 21st-century, post-punk manhood. This is a good trip in the most profound sense.” -Jon Raymond, Denial; Freebird; and others
“Seth Lorinczi’s journey through MDMA therapy takes him into a labyrinth of family secrets and ancestral trauma. The story of what he finds there—and how it changes him—is as gripping and propulsive as a crime novel. I was captivated the whole way through.”
-Leni Zumas, author: Red Clocks; The Listeners; Farewell, Navigator
“A very unique, courageous, and deeply moving book; I have personally never seen anything else like it….a journey through our individual and collective trauma in order to find the hidden treasure enfolded within the darkness—our creative self. Bravo!”
-Paul Levy, author: Undreaming Wetiko, The Quantum Revelation and others
“[A] clear-eyed and tender investigation of family history, intergenerational trauma, and the power of psychedelics to help transcend the past.” -Rebecca Clarren, author: The Cost of Free Land, Kickdown
Seth Lorinczi’s writing appears in The Guardian, DoubleBlind, Narratively, Portland Monthly and other print anthologies and periodicals. He’s presented previously on Death Trip: A Post-Holocaust Psychedelic Memoir at Yale University, the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education, UC Berkeley (upcoming) and numerous other literary and cultural venues and podcasts. In addition, he was a co-founder of “Judaism & The Psychedelic Renaissance,” a first-of-its-kind live event here in Portland.
Vanessa Veselka is a novelist who has been, at various times, a teenage runaway, a sex-worker, a union organizer, a student of paleontology, a musician, a cab driver, and a mother. She is the author of The Great Offshore Grounds, which was nominated for the 2020 National Book Award, and which won the Oregon Book Award, and the cult classic, Zazen, which was awarded the 2012 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize. Her short fiction appears in Zyzzyva and Tin House Magazine, and her essays in The New York Times, GQ, The Atlantic, Bitch Magazine, The Atavist, and Best American Essays.