Juana Libedinsky, an Argentine journalist and author, will be at the Southampton Arts Center on Saturday at 4 p.m. to discuss her just-published memoir, “Downhill: A Memoir of an Accident, Two Comas, Many Books, and Starting Over.”
In 2019, Libedinsky’s husband, Conrado Tenaglia, a successful New York City attorney, had a skiing accident in the Patagonian Andes that left him in a coma with low odds of survival, and upended the lives of his wife and children.
Libedinsky tells the story in the first person, tracing a path from the vast stillness of the Andes to the hospital corridors of Buenos Aires, and, eventually, to Manhattan and Southampton, where the family must learn how to rebuild a life. As she navigates the world of coma care, hospital bureaucracy, and child raising, she leans on friends and neighbors, as well as racket sports and books.
The memoir also contains her reflections on the writers who sustained her through the ordeal, among them Joan Didion on grief, Jorge Luis Borges on memory, and Abraham Verghese on the orderly nature of tennis.
“Libedinsky’s humor and wit, mixed in with her near-reverence to literature and the game of tennis, make for a compelling read that will deeply move you and leave you wanting to know more about this New York insider-outsider,” wrote Andrea Yaryura Clark, author of “On a Night of a Thousand Stars.”
The good news is that by 2024, Tenaglia was sufficiently recovered to be named International Lawyer of the Year by Latin Lawyer magazine, the first Argentine to be so honored.
Tickets are $15, $10 for members.
Panel Postponed
Word came in after the print version went to press that “Behind the Canvas: The Hidden World of Fine Art Insurance,” a panel discussion originally set for Saturday morning at 11, has been postponed due to the forecast of inclement weather.