Join the virtual discussion with Becky Dayton of Vermont Book Shop and author Rebecca Makkai of “I Have Some Questions For You”.
Buy “I Have Some Questions For You” from Vermont Book Shop.
The dynamic, unpredictable nature of the pandemic has forced novelists to become pundits, predicting what the world will look like when their novels are published.
They also face unique craft challenges: how do masks affect dialogue, character descriptions, and scene? How do social distancing and quarantine warp relationship dynamics?
Rebecca Makkai chose to move the events of I Have Some Questions for You to 2018, but still had to negotiate Covid protocol for courtroom scenes set in 2022. The protagonist of Weike Wang’s Joan Is Okay is an emergency room doctor in New York City; when Covid hit, Wang revised the novel to feature overwhelmed hospitals. A deadly flu ravages the globe in Phase Six by Jim Shepard, and the lessons of the Covid pandemic are in the distant past.
These three novelists will discuss the drafting and revision process of their novels and explain how they tackled the ever-changing question of how Covid should factor into their work. Moderated by Halimah Marcus.
This year’s Masquerade of the Red Death is celebrating excellence in pandemic fiction with special guests and book giveaways at our party in Brooklyn on Friday, October 21, as well as related virtual salons. This salon is free for Masquerade ticket-holders*, $10 for the general public, and $5 for EL members.
*Masquerade ticket holders will receive an email with a discount code to register for free.
When we sit down to write, the first words, scenes, characters, conflicts, and settings we come up with are often the least original ones of which we’re capable. Digging past the obvious, the stock (and even the products of the collective unconscious), we might finally arrive at stories that are strikingly new and memorable. In this class we’ll cover some key elements of originality — specificity, idiosyncrasy, complexity, repetition, and change — and talk about accessing them both in drafting and revision.For writing to succeed, it must be both well-executed and original. While originality might seem intuitive, or even a product of the writer’s personality, it’s in fact a skill that can be sharpened. That’s what we’ll be doing.
Online Workshop Via Zoom
Saturday, April 30th, 2022 | 2:00pm – 4:00pm CT
$68 for members
$75 for non members
Lan Samantha Chang, author of The Family Chao,
in conversation with
Rebecca Makkai, author of The Great Believers
The Friends of the Bronxville Public Library (FOBPL) is pleased to host award-winning author Lan Samantha Chang, who will discuss her new novel, The Family Chao. FOBPL is equally thrilled to host acclaimed author Rebecca Makkai to moderate this event.
For the recent MyHometownBronxville article, click here.
Thursday, April 21, 2022
7:00-8:00 p.m. via Zoom
This event is free, but registration is required.
To register, please click here.
Registration closes on April 21, 12:00 p.m.
(Zoom link will be provided through Eventbrite Registration on April 21.)
THE FAMILY CHAO is an electrifying and devastating portrait of a Chinese American family grappling with trauma, grief, race, love, and longing. Brimming with comedy, suspense, and heartbreak, Lan Samantha Chang’s masterpiece is one of the most ambitious novels about America in recent years.
Lan Samantha Chang is the award-winning author of a collection of short fiction, Hunger, and novels The Family Chao, Inheritance and All is Forgotten, Nothing is Lost. A recent Berlin Prize Fellow, she also has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. Chang is the first Asian American and the first female director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She lives in Iowa City. For more on Lan Samantha Chang and The Family Chao, click here.
Moderator Rebecca Makkai is the Chicago-based author of the novels The Great Believers, The Hundred-Year House, and The Borrower, as well as the short story collection Music for Wartime. The Great Believerswas a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and received the ALA Carnegie Medal and the LA Times Book Prize, among other honors. Makkai is on the MFA faculties of Sierra Nevada College and Northwestern University, and she is Artistic Director of StoryStudio Chicago. For more on Rebecca Makkai, click here.
Signed copies of The Family Chao are available for sale now at Womrath Bookshop.
The FOBPL appreciates your donations. Thank you!
Looking for the perfect gift idea for that avid and discerning reader on your holiday shopping list? Well call off the dogs, because we have you covered. Exile in Bookville has the honor of hosting Lily King on Monday, December 6th at 7:00pm central to help celebrate her debut short story collection, Five Tuesdays in Winter. This very special event will be held IN PERSON and virtually simulcast just a few floors above Exile in beautiful Curtiss Hall, located on the 10th floor of the historic Fine Arts Building in downtown Chicago. Come for the breathtaking view, stay for the event! And if that wasn’t enough, Lily will be in conversation with literary superstar and Exile VIP Rebecca Makkai!
