Join Writer-in-Residence Carleigh Baker for a conversation with video essayist Jacob Geller, author of How a Game Lives, a collection of essays that weaves video games, history and literature into thoughtful cultural discourse. Jacob Geller will join via livestream.
Wednesday, Nov. 26 at 1 p.m.
Founders Assembly Hall, FC 152
As the Los Angeles Review of Books put it, “Jacob Geller…is to the video game essay what Annie Dillard is to the literary essay.”
Jacob Geller is a video essayist, critic, and writer who spins video games, pop culture, history and literature into deeply reflective narratives about what it means to be a human. From the haunting aesthetics of Disco Elysium to the role of visual art in grief, to the unexpected dialogue between Dark Souls III and Iain Reid’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things – if there’s a cultural corner worth interrogating, Geller has likely explored it.
On YouTube, his essays have been watched more than 100 million times, earning him a devoted audience drawn to his curiosity and diligent research. He’s a featured creator on Nebula and the author of two beautifully crafted essay collections with UK publisher Lost In Cult: How a Game Lives (2024) and You’re Not Overthinking It (forthcoming, 2026).
Carleigh Baker is an author and teacher of Métis and European descent. Born and raised on Stó:lō territory, she currently lives on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy ̓ əm, Skwxwú7mesh and səl̓ilwəta. Her debut story collection, Bad Endings, won the City of Vancouver Book Award and was a finalist for the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Indigenous Voices Award for fiction. Her work has been translated into several languages and anthologized in North America and Europe. Her latest collection, Last Woman, was a finalist for the 2025 Jim Deva Prize for writing that provokes. She also writes the column Bizarre Celebrations for Hazlitt.net. As a researcher, Baker is most interested in how fiction can be used to address the climate crisis. She was a 2019/20 Shadbolt Fellow in the Humanities at Simon Fraser University, where she teaches creative writing.