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Kate Reed Petty in conversation with Rebecca Makkai Virtual Event | True Story

Ticketing

This free event will be streamed live on the Novel Neighbor’s Facebook and YouTube pages. Registration is optional, but recommended.

Signed bookplates are available with purchases made through the Novel Neighbor. You may buy a copy as an add-on with your free event registration.

Please note that we are not able to process international orders through Eventbrite. If you would like to order from outside the United States, please email hello@thenovelneighbor.com.

About TRUE STORY

“A gripping, ripped-from-headlines tale.” —People

“Spellbinding.” —Megan Abbott, The New York Times Book Review

Tracing the fifteen-year fallout of a toxic high school rumor, a riveting, astonishingly original debut novel about the power of stories—and who gets to tell them

2015. A gifted and reclusive ghostwriter, Alice Lovett makes a living helping other people tell their stories. But she is haunted by the one story she can’t tell: the story of, as she puts it, “the things that happened while I was asleep.”

1999. Nick Brothers and his lacrosse teammates return for their senior year at their wealthy Maryland high school as the reigning state champions. They’re on top of the world—until two of his friends drive a passed-out girl home from of the team’s “legendary” parties, and a rumor about what happened in the backseat spreads through the town like wildfire.

The boys deny the allegations, and, eventually, the town moves on. But not everyone can. Nick descends into alcoholism, and Alice builds a life in fits and starts, underestimating herself and placing her trust in the wrong people. When she finally gets the opportunity to confront the past she can’t remember—but which has nevertheless shaped her life—will she take it?

An inventive and breathtaking exploration of a woman finding her voice in the wake of trauma, True Story is part psychological thriller, part fever dream, and part timely comment on sexual assault, power, and the very nature of truth. Ingeniously constructed and full of twists and turns that will keep you guessing until the final pages, it marks the debut of a singular and daring new voice in fiction.

About the Author

Kate Reed Petty has been recognized with a Narrative magazine 30 Below Award, as well as grants and scholarships from the Robert Deutsch Foundation, The Mount, Bloedel Reserve, and the Sewanee Writers Conference. Her short fiction has been published in Electric Literature, American Short Fiction, Blackbird, Ambit, Nat. Brut, and Los Angeles Review of Books, and she has a master of letters from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. She lives in Baltimore.

on August 4 2021· Tagged: , , , , , , ,

Loyola University Chicago 2021 Humanities Forum: Reflections on the Early days of the AIDS Pandemic

Join our distinguished panel as they reflect on the early days of another pandemic that left lasting impacts on society: the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980s. Our panelists will reflect on their experiences as caregivers, activists/ advocates, and authors when this disease first appeared as a medical mystery and discuss how its course sparked social, political, and cultural change. Loyola’s Mark Kuczewski, PhD, and Gail Hendler, MLS, will moderate.

Rebecca Makkai, MA

Her novel, The Great Believers, was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award; it was the winner of the ALA Carnegie Medal, the Stonewall Book Award, the LA Times Book Prize, the Clark Fiction Prize, the Midwest Independent Booksellers Award, and the Chicago Review of Books Award. She is on the MFA faculties of Sierra Nevada College and Northwestern University and is the Artistic Director of StoryStudio Chicago.

Paul O’Keefe, MD

Paul O’Keefe completed his MD at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine in 1971. He joined the Stritch faculty as Assistant Professor of Medicine in 1977 and established the Division of Infectious Diseases in the Department of Medicine. During
his time at Stritch, he partnered with the Cook County Department of Public Health to establish the Maywood Clinic. The clinic continues to operate at the Maywood outpatient facility and is now known as Access to Care.

MK Czerwiec, RN, MA

MK Czerwiec is a nurse, cartoonist, educator, and co-founder of Graphic Medicine. She is the author of Taking Turns: Stories from HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371. She also co-authored the Graphic Medicine Manifesto in 2014. Her latest book, Menopause: A Comic Treatment, was released in May 2020

on April 8 2021· Tagged: , , , , ,

Chicago Literary Alliance Presents: One For The Books

Throughout the first two weeks of April, enjoy a variety of virtual events presented by The Chicago Literary Alliance that celebrate the many ways we use the tools of literacy. Take part in an online silent auction featuring unique and rare books, as well as items for your home. One For The Books is a series of events fundraising to benefit The Chicago Literary Alliance

Join us on Thursday, April 1 at 6 PM for a conversation with Rebecca Makkai to discuss her work, her creative process, and her view of a literate Chicago. Zoom links will be sent to all ticket holders closer to the event.

on April 1 2021· Tagged: , , , , , , ,

Ellen Stone Belic Presents: In Her Infinite Wisdom Joyce Carol Oates: The (Other) You In Conversation With Rebecca Makkai

Part of the 2021 Chicago Humanities Festival

In her latest short story collection The (Other) You Joyce Carol Oates ponders who her characters might have become if they’d chosen different paths. Through the imaginations of her contemplative protagonists, Oates—author of contemporary classic novels like We Were the Mulvaneys and Blonde—deftly detangles the complex circumstances that dictate who we turn out to be. Join Oates and Rebecca Makkai, author of Pulitzer Prize finalist The Great Believers, for a discussion of destiny, alternative realities, and our other selves.

  • General Audience tickets are $$35, which includes access to the virtual event and a signed copy of The (Other) You directly to your door (U.S. addresses only). ALL tickets must be purchased online via Seminary Co-op directly. Phone orders or email requests cannot be accepted.
  • This program is free to watch for CHF members at the Friends level ($125) and up, no need to register. These members will be emailed a link to enjoy the program on the event date. Books are available for purchase.
  • Please note: this event will be livestreamed on March 25th at 7pm central time and registered guests will have a period of 7 days to enjoy the program.
  • Registered guests will receive a link to watch the program from the Chicago Humanities Festival via email on the day of the event at the email address you used to make your purchase.
  • All CHF’s virtual events have closed captions. To request another accessible accommodation, such as ASL interpretation or audio description, please reach out to us at access@chicagohumanities.org. We will do our best to accommodate late requests, but to ensure a service provider is available, please try to make your request at least 2 weeks out from the event date.
  • If you have questions about the virtual event, please contact the Chicago Humanities Festival.
  • This event will be livestreamed with a live Q+A.

This program is generously underwritten by Ellen Stone Belic.

*Special note about registration: To improve your experience on our website, we are currently building a new ticketing system. In the meantime, you’ll notice different ways of registering for upcoming winter events. We know this can be confusing and we appreciate your patience as we build a better platform. Please reach out to tickets@chicagohumanities.org with any questions–we have a small staff and promise to reply as soon as we can!

on March 25 2021· Tagged: , , , , , , , ,

Magic City Books Presents: Virtual Event – Kevin Brockmeier In Conversation with Rebecca Makkai

Magic City Books is proud to welcome Kevin Brockmeier for a virtual author event in celebration of his new collection of stories, The Ghost Variations. 

The author of the acclaimed novel The Brief History of the Dead now gives us one hundred funny, poignant, scary, and thought-provoking ghost stories that explore all aspects of the afterlife. These tales are by turns playful, chilling, and philosophical, paying homage to the genre while audaciously subverting expectations. The ghosts in these pages are certain to haunt you well after you’ve closed the book.

Kevin will be joined in conversation by Rebecca Makkai, author of The Great Believers.

This free event will be hosted on the Zoom platform and Facebook Live. To register in advance for the Zoom event visit: https://magiccitybooks.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_YUhZ3OLOR1arH2OuetXH7g.

After you register you will receive a confirmation email with instructions on how to join the event on Friday, March 12.

The Ghost Variations will be published on March 9, 2021. To pre-order a copy you can call Magic City Books, 918-602-4452 or visit: https://magiccitybooks.square.site/product/the-ghost-variations/437.

About The Ghost Variations

Ghost stories tap into our most primal emotions as they encourage us to confront the timeless question: What comes after death? Here, in tales that are by turn scary, funny, philosophic, and touching, you’ll find that question sharpened, split, reconsidered–and met with a multitude of answers.

A spirit who is fated to spend eternity reliving the exact moment she lost her chance at love, ghostly trees that haunt the occupant of a wooden house, specters that snatch anyone who steps into the shadows, and parakeets that serve as mouthpieces for the dead: these are just a few of the characters in this extraordinary compendium of one hundred ghost stories. Kevin Brockmeier’s fiction has always explored the space between the fantastical and the everyday with profundity and poignancy. As in his previous books, The Ghost Variations discovers new ways of looking at who we are and what matters to us, exploring how mysterious, sad, strange, and comical it is to be alive–or, as it happens, not to be.

KEVIN BROCKMEIER is the author of the memoir A Few Seconds of Radiant Filmstrip; the novels The Illumination, The Brief History of the Dead, and The Truth About Celia; the story collections The Ghost Variations, Things That Fall from the Sky and The View from the Seventh Layer; and the children’s novels City of Names and Grooves: A Kind of Mystery. His work has been translated into seventeen languages. He teaches frequently at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and lives in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he was raised.

on March 12 2021· Tagged: , , , , ,

Virtual Book Launch: THE UPSTAIRS HOUSE by Julia Fine In Conversation With Rebecca Makkai

Join us on Women & Children First’s Crowdcast Channel for the virtual launch celebration for The Upstairs House by Julia Fine! For this event, Fine will be in conversation with Rebecca Makkai.

REGISTER HERE

Ravaged and sore from giving birth to her first child, Megan is mostly raising her newborn alone while her husband travels for work. Physically exhausted and mentally drained, she’s also wracked with guilt over her unfinished dissertation—a thesis on mid-century children’s literature.

Enter a new upstairs neighbor: the ghost of quixotic children’s book writer Margaret Wise Brown—author of the beloved classic Goodnight Moon—whose existence no one else will acknowledge. It seems Margaret has unfinished business with her former lover, the once-famous socialite and actress Michael Strange, and is determined to draw Megan into the fray. As Michael joins the haunting, Megan finds herself caught in the wake of a supernatural power struggle—and until she can find a way to quiet these spirits, she and her newborn daughter are in terrible danger.

Using Megan’s postpartum haunting as a powerful metaphor for a woman’s fraught relationship with her body and mind, Julia Fine once again delivers an imaginative and “barely restrained, careful musing on female desire, loneliness, and hereditary inheritances” (Washington Post).

Julia Fine is the author of the critically acclaimed What Should Be Wild, which was shortlisted for the Bram Stoker Superior First Novel Award and the Chicago Review of Books Award. She teaches writing in Chicago, where she lives with her husband and son.

Rebecca Makkai latest novel, The Great Believers, was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award; it was the winner of the ALA Carnegie Medal, the Stonewall Book Award, the LA Times Book Prize, the Clark Fiction Prize, the Midwest Independent Booksellers Award, and the Chicago Review of Books Award; and it was one of the New York Times' Ten Best Books of 2018. Her other books are the novels The Borrower and The Hundred-Year House, and the collection Music for Wartime — four stories from which appeared in The Best American Short Stories. Rebecca is on the MFA faculties of Sierra Nevada College and Northwestern University. She is Artistic Director of StoryStudio Chicago.

Event date:
Wednesday, February 24, 2021 – 7:00pm
Event address:
Virtual via Crowdcast

on February 24 2021· Tagged: , , , , , , , ,

PEN Out Loud: Brandon Hobson with Rebecca Makkai

Flash sale until January 27! Use the code WINTERPOL for 50 percent off General Admission tickets.
The first 350 Admission With Book tickets will include a bookplate.

National Book Award finalist Brandon Hobson joins PEN Out Loud to celebrate his latest novel, The Removed. Weaving together multiple first-person narrators and Cherokee folklore, the novel tells the story of a Cherokee family 15 years after an unjust police shooting of one of the family’s three children. Hobson will be joined in conversation with Pulitzer Prize finalist Rebecca Makkai to discuss the novel and its “meditation on family, grief, home, and the power of stories on both a personal and ancestral level.”

This digital event will start at 8pm ET / 5pm PT.

Presented in collaboration with Strand Book Store and Scripps Presents.

Strand Book Store logoScripps Presents logo

ASL interpretive services are provided by ProBono ASL.

 

PEN Out Loud focuses on amplifying diverse voices and convening vital conversations with authors, poets, journalists, artists, and activists.

This winter, these conversations shift our focus inward, providing a necessary pause to examine who we once were, who we are now, and who we’d like to become. Following a fraught year in which we were challenged to reckon with our past, confront our present, and reimagine our future, we turn to literature to engage our minds and reconnect with ourselves—physically, mentally, and emotionally.

Each event this season explores the core of our humanity, generously interrogating our understanding of—and capacity to experience—passion and desire, grief and resilience, nourishment and love, reflection and hope.

$20 General Admission*
* Admission with books, signed books, and bookplates available at additional cost.

on February 16 2021· Tagged: , , , , , , , , ,

Cocktails & Conversation: Kimberly King Parsons, Megha Majumdar & Julia Phillips with Rebecca Makkai

What better time to host and celebrate four extremely talented National Book Award for fiction long and short listers? We believe two days after the winners of the 2020 National Book Awards winners have been announced, that’s when. Please join us on November 20th at 7pm central as Exile in Bookville welcomes Kimberly King Parsons (Black Light: Stories), Megha Majumdar (A Burning) and Julia Phillips (Disappearing Earth) in conversation with Rebecca Makkai (The Great Believers).
Exile in Bookville is partnering with Books Are Magic, Brooklyn for this event which will be streamed through Zoom and broadcast on Exile in Bookville’s Facebook Live as well as on the Exile in Bookville website.
You can purchase all of the books mentioned above through the Exile in Bookville website.

on November 20 2020· Tagged: , , , , , ,

Virtual Book Launch Party: THE TALENTED MISS FARWELL by Emily Gray Tedrowe (Presented by Women & Children First)

Join Women & Children First for the virtual launch party for The Talented Miss Farwell by Emily Gray Tedrowe. For this event, Emily will be in conversation with Rebecca Makkai. This event will be streamed on Women & Children First’s Crowdcast channel.

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on September 29 2020· Tagged: , , , , ,

Ragdale Ring 2020 Performance: Michael Zapata and The Herbsaint Band

Join Ragdale Ring for a special evening of New Orleans flavor, featuring author Michael Zapata in conversation with Rebecca Makkai, and The Herbsaint Band. This event is outdoors, with limited seating capacity to comply with Illinois COVID safety guidelines

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on September 12 2020· Tagged: , , , , , ,

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