*The Return of the 90s* with Sean O'Brien and Sam Weselowski

The 1990s were a cultural watershed, marking a turning point in popular music, television, cinema, literature and fashion. Nestled between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the 9/11 attacks, the decade witnessed the ‘end of history’ and the birth of the internet, the consolidation of neoliberalism, and a political urgency embodied by the anti-globalisation movement. Now in the rearview mirror, this pivotal decade appears as a time to be reckoned with, its history yet to be written, and we have only begun to come to terms with its lasting significance.

Join us at EBB for a timely conversation around the book *The Return of the 90s*, published this year by Pluto Press. Editor Sean O'Brien and poet Sam Weselowski will be unpicking the book's themes and reassessing this crucial decade.

*The Return of the 90s* is an anthology that dives into the contemporary fascination with the 90s. Plotting a playful course between sociology and cultural studies on the one hand and giddy nostalgia on the other, the book charts decisive developments of the decade to fully apprehend its resonances today.

Covering everything from ‘girl power,’ Star Trek and hip-hop to queer cinema, anarchist counterculture and the erotic thriller, *The Return of the 90s* excavates key moments in 90s culture and uncovers its multiple reckonings in the present.

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Sean O’Brien is Lecturer in US Literature at the University of Bristol. He is the editor of *Growing Pains: Reframing the Degrowth Debates*. Recent collaborations include *Keywords for Value and Culture* with Thomas Waller, and *The Return of the 90s: A Cultural History of the Present* (Pluto, 2026) with Madeline Lane-McKinley. He is currently completing a book entitled, *Representing Precarity: American Literature and Culture from Boom to Crisis*.

Sam Weselowski is a poet and essayist from Vancouver, Canada. His publications include *I Love My Job To&#x6F;* (If a Leaf Falls, 2024), *Triple Rainforest* (Veer2, 2023), and *Love Poems < 3*** (Distance No Object, 2021). He works as an Associate Tutor in English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick. His research currently focuses on two book projects, *Metropolitan Frontiers: Vancouver Poetry and the Urban Form of Extraction* and *Property's Address: The Afterlives of Dispossession in Postwar Indigenous, Canadian, and American Poetics*. He lives in Birmingham, UK.