Virtual Crush Artist Series: Melissa Broder – So Sad Today | Reading + Q&A with LaTurbo Avedon
Saturday, July 25, 2026 | 3-4pm
Location: Minnesota Street Project Lounge (1201 Minnesota Street, San Francisco)
Free event
In conjunction with the group exhibition Virtual Crush currently on view at Slash, author, essayist, and poet Melissa Broder presents a reading from So Sad Today, marking the ten-year anniversary of the landmark essay collection. First conceived in 2012 as an anonymous Twitter account—an unfiltered channel for Broder’s anxiety, desire, and ultra-dark humor that drew a following of hundreds of thousands before she revealed herself as its author—@sosadtoday became one of the defining voices of confessional life online. The 2016 book So Sad Today: Personal Essays carried that raw, intimate candor into long form, cementing the project as an enduring portrait of the 2010s networked self. Broder’s current Substack work appears in Virtual Crush, LaTurbo Avedon’s group exhibition on the simulated body, identity, and intimacy.
Following the reading, Broder is joined by avatar artist and Virtual Crush curator LaTurbo Avedon for a brief Q&A.
Melissa Broder is the author of the novels Death Valley, Milk Fed, and The Pisces, and the forthcoming Empty and Marvelous (Scribner; 2027), the essay collection So Sad Today, and five poetry collections, including Superdoom. Her books are translated in over twelve languages.
LaTurbo Avedon (they/them) is a pioneering artist and curator, celebrated for their work in the digital and virtual art realms. Their character creation and body of work are developed through video game worlds and emergent simulation technologies. Their curatorial approach highlights the democratic accessibility offered to artists and audiences within hybrid virtual frameworks. LaTurbo’s work has appeared internationally, including at MAK – Museum of Applied Arts (Vienna), Transmediale (Berlin), Haus der elektronischen Künste (Basel), and The Whitney Museum (NYC).