South Street Seaport Museum to Celebrate The 20th Anniversary Of 'The Seas'

South Street Seaport Museum will present Celebrating the 20th Anniversary of The Seas on Thursday, May 1, 2025, at 7pm, aboard the 1885 tall ship Wavertree. Admission is $15 to $32.

Join the South Street Seaport Museum, in partnership with McNally Jackson and BELLETRIST--an online reading community--for an evening of maritime-inspired festivities aboard the 1885 tall ship Wavertree that celebrate two decades of the cult classic The Seas by American novelist, essayist, and short-story writer Samantha Hunt.

Following a teenage girl who believes she's a mermaid, The Seas "blurred the lines between reality and fairy tale, hope and delusion, sanity and madness" and predated our contemporary wave of surreal fiction by writers like Melissa Broder, Marie Helene Bertino, Yasmin Zaher, and Ottessa Moshfegh. In a conversation moderated by BELLETRIST's Karah Preiss, author Samantha Hunt and author and actor Alexandra Auder will discuss the novel's core love story and flexible definition of reality, but also: mermaids, girlhood, and identity. A book signing will follow the discussion.

About the Speakers

Samantha Hunt is the author of four books of fiction, including The Seas and The Dark Dark. The Seas, her debut novel, won a National Book Foundation award for writers under 35. She is also the author of Mr. Splitfoot, Dark, Dark: Stories, and The Invention of Everything Else. Hunt's writing has been published in The New Yorker and The New York Times among others. She is also the author of The Unwritten Book, a collection of essays about death and literature. Hunt is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her work has been translated into thirteen languages.

Alexandra Auder is a writer and actor. Her memoir, Don't Call Me Home, about growing up in the Chelsea Hotel with a crazy mom, was a finalist for The Thurber Prize for American Humor. She leads an online weekly writing group through Substack.

Karah Preiss is a creative producer living in New York City. She co-founded BELLETRIST book club with actress Emma Roberts, along with BELLETRIST Productions, a TV and film production company.