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Exile In Bookville Presents: Authors on Tap: Steve Almond and Rebecca Makkai

Authors on Tap: Steve Almond and Rebecca Makkai

Friday May 27 2022 7:00pm – 8:00pm

Join us IN PERSON or virtually on Friday, May 27th at 7:00pm central to help celebrate Steve Almond‘s new novel, All the Secrets of the World.  Steve will be in conversation with Exile MVP Rebecca Makkai!
Steve Almond is the author of a dozen books, including “Candyfreak” and “Against Football,” which were both on the New York Times’ Bestseller list for about four seconds.  He’s the recipient of an NEA grant for 2022 and teaches at Harvard and Wesleyan. His work has been published in the Best American Short Stories, the Best American Mysteries, and the New York Times Magazine. Fancy fancy. After 30 years of writing terrible novels, he finally wrote one that doesn’t suck. All the Secrets of the World will be out in May.

Rebecca Makkai is the Chicago-based author of the novels The Great BelieversThe Hundred-Year House, and The Borrower, as well as the short story collection Music for WartimeThe Great Believers was 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.

You can purchase their books through the respective links and Steve and Rebecca are happy to sign or personalize copies! If you can’t make it to the event, signed copies will be available and we ship nationally!

Please note the following COVID protocols for those attending IN PERSON:

  • Attendees must present a physical copy or a photo of their COVID-19 vaccine card along with a valid photo ID (state, government, or school ID); or
  • Provide a time-stamped printout, photo, or email of a negative PCR test taken within 48 hours of the event or a negative Rapid Antigen Test taken within 36 hours of the event, along with a valid photo ID (state, government, or school ID).
  • All persons must wear a mask for the duration of their time in the Fine Arts Building, regardless of vaccination status in accordance with our current COVID policies

Please email us at books@exileinbookville.com or phone us at (312)-753-3154 if you have any questions or concerns. 

*There is no need to register if you are attending in person!

on April 15 2022· Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

In-Person Event with Paul Holes / Unmasked

 

Join Anderson’s bookshop for an in-person event with Paul Holes, the retired cold-case detective behind investigations into the Golden State Killer, Jaycee Dugard, and Laci Peterson cases,  to discuss his new memoir Unmasked: My Life Solving America’s Cold Cases.  Paul will be in conversation with New York Times bestselling author Rebecca Makkai.

After a discussion by the author and a conversation partner, fans will be welcome to join a live signing line to get their book autographed by the author.  COVID safety protocols will be followed.

This event will be held at Wentz Concert Hall on the campus of North Central College, and pre-registration is required as space is limited. 

 

Please read these COVID protection requirements carefully:

Masks are required of all customers, regardless of vaccination status, and must remain properly covering the face for the entirety of the event.

A ticket is required for all attendees, attendance may be capped, and seating may also be restricted in order to allow for social distancing.

Anderson’s Bookshop, the author, and the publisher reserve the right to change the format of this event to a virtual one at any time if it becomes necessary.  A change in format will not entitle ticket holders to any refund.

Failure to follow these guidelines and to treat all participants with courtesy and respect may result in your expulsion from the event.

 

Please be advised that Anderson’s Bookshop assumes no responsibility or liability for any personal injury or other loss you may incur as a result of your decision to attend an event, including the transmission of Covid-19 or related illnesses.  We expect that for the protection of everyone, all applicable Covid related protocols will be followed.  

 

Thank you for your understanding and cooperation!

More about the book:

In this memoir, Paul Holes takes us through his memories of a storied career and provides an insider account of some of the most notorious cases in contemporary American history, including the hunt for the Golden State Killer, Laci Peterson’s murder, and Jaycee Dugard’s kidnapping. This is also a revelatory profile of a complex man and what makes him tick: the drive to find closure for victims and their loved ones, the inability to walk away from a challenge—even at the expense of his own happiness. Holes opens up the most intimate scenes of his life: his moments of self-doubt and the impact that detective work has had on his marriage. This is a story about the gritty truth of crime-solving when there are no flashbulbs and “case closed” headlines. It is the story of a man and his commitment to cases and people who might otherwise have been forgotten.

About the author:

In 2018, Paul Holes retired as a Cold Case Investigator after spending more than 27 years working in Contra Costa County in California’s Bay Area. Paul specialized in cold case and serial predator crimes, lending his expertise to notable cases, including the murder of Laci Peterson and the kidnapping of Jaycee Dugard. Most prominently, Paul’s career culminated with his identification of the Golden State Killer, the most notorious and cunning serial predator in U.S. history.

 

Since the arrest of Joseph DeAngelo, the Golden State Killer, Holes has been very involved on the media side, continuing to assist law enforcement and victims’ families with their unsolved cases through the television shows The DNA of Murder with Paul Holes and America’s Most Wanted, and with the podcast Jensen & Holes: The Murder Squad.

Rebecca Makkai is the Chicago-based author of the novels The Great BelieversThe Hundred-Year House, and The Borrower, as well as the short story collection Music for WartimeThe Great Believers was 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.

 

on April 15 2022· Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

American Writers Festival

American Writers Festival

My Monticello: Jocelyn Johnson in conversation with Rebecca Makkai
Event Time: 11:30 a.m.
Event Location: Preston Bradley Hall, Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington, Chicago IL

The inaugural American Writers Festival on May 15, 2022 in Chicago coincides with the American Writers Museum’s fifth anniversary. The free literary festival will be held at four stages inside the Chicago Cultural Center and one stage at the American Writers Museum, and feature more than 75 beloved contemporary authors, artists and playwrights. Participating writers will address their perspectives on many of today’s most timely and controversial topics including immigration, book censorship, racism and equality through themes within their literature.

As a special bonus, the AWM will waive museum admission fees on Sunday, May 15 and Monday, May 16 – AWM’s fifth anniversary – to encourage more people to experience the literary works of the greatest American writers.

 

 

on April 15 2022· Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Authors on Tap: Lily King and Rebecca Makkai

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!

Continue reading ?

on November 9 2021· Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Joshua Ferris in conversation with Rebecca Makkai: A Calling for Charlie Barnes

The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is pleased to welcome New York Times bestselling author Joshua Ferris as he discusses his new novel, A CALLING FOR CHARLIE BARNES. Ferris will be in conversation with bestselling author Rebecca Makkai.

This event is free and open to the public, with registration. Signed, first edition copies are available for purchase through the Midtown Scholar Bookstore.

About the Book:

Someone is telling the story of the life of Charlie Barnes, and it doesn’t appear to be going well. Too often divorced, discontent with life’s compromises and in a house he hates, this lifelong schemer and eternal romantic would like out of his present circumstances and into the American dream. But when the twin calamities of the Great Recession and a cancer scare come along to compound his troubles, his dreams dwindle further, and an infinite past full of forking paths quickly tapers to a black dot.

Then, against all odds, something goes right for a change: Charlie is granted a second act. With help from his storyteller son, he surveys the facts of his life and finds his true calling where he least expects it—in a sacrifice that redounds with selflessness and love—at last becoming the man his son always knew he could be.

A Calling for Charlie Barnes is a profound and tender portrait of a man whose desperate need to be loved is his downfall, and a brutally funny account of how that love is ultimately earned.

About the Authors:

Joshua Ferris is the author of three previous novels, Then We Came to the End, The Unnamed and To Rise Again at a Decent Hour, and a collection of stories, The Dinner Party. He was a finalist for the National Book Award, winner of the Barnes and Noble Discover Award and the PEN/Hemingway Award, and was named one of The New Yorker’s “20 Under 40” writers in 2010. To Rise Again at a Decent Hour won the Dylan Thomas Prize and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. His short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, and Best American Short Stories. He lives in New York.

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. Visit her at RebeccaMakkai.com or on twitter @rebeccamakkai.

on September 27 2021· Tagged: , , , , , , ,

Unabridged Books Presents: “The Talented Miss Farwell” Virtual Event with Emily Gray Tedrowe & Rebecca Makkai

Celebrate the paperback release of The Talented Miss Farwell with author Emily Gray Tedrowe on Wednesday, September 1st at 7:30 pm CDT! The author will be joined for a conversation by Rebecca Makkai!

About the book:
Catch Me If You Can meets Patricia Highsmith in this “stylish” (New York Times Book Review) page-turner of greed and obsession, survival and self-invention that is a piercing character study of one unforgettable female con artist.

At the end of the 1990s, with the art market finally recovered from its disastrous collapse, Miss Rebecca Farwell has made a killing at Christie’s in New York City, selling a portion of her extraordinary art collection for a rumored 900 percent profit. Dressed in couture YSL, drinking the finest champagne at trendy Balthazar, Reba, as she’s known, is the picture of a wealthy art collector. To some, the elusive Miss Farwell is a shark with outstanding business acumen. To others, she’s a heartless capitalist whose only interest in art is how much she can make.

But a thousand miles from the Big Apple, in the small town of Pierson, Illinois, Miss Farwell is someone else entirely–a quiet single woman known as Becky who still lives in her family’s farmhouse, wears sensible shoes, and works tirelessly as the town’s treasurer and controller.

No one understands the ins and outs of Pierson’s accounts better than Becky; she’s the last one in the office every night, crunching the numbers. Somehow, her neighbors marvel, she always finds a way to get the struggling town just a little more money. What Pierson doesn’t see–and can never discover–is that much of that money is shifted into a separate account that she controls, “borrowed” funds used to finance her art habit. Though she quietly repays Pierson when she can, the business of art is cutthroat and unpredictable.

But as Reba Farwell’s deals get bigger and bigger, Becky Farwell’s debt to Pierson spirals out of control. How long can the talented Miss Farwell continue to pull off her double life?

About the author:
Emily Gray Tedrowe
is the Chicago-based author of three novels including The Talented Miss Farwell.
Photo Credt: 
Marion Ettlinger

 

 

 

 

 

Rebecca Makkai is the Chicago-based author of the novels The Great BelieversThe Hundred-Year House, and The Borrower, as well as the short story collection Music for Wartime.The Great Believers was 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.

 

on August 31 2021· Tagged: , , , , ,

Exile in Bookville Presents: Authors on Tap: Nick Flynn and Rebecca Makkai

Authors on Tap: Nick Flynn and Rebecca Makkai
Thursday August 26, 2021 | 7:00PM – 8:00PM CT

Join us on August 26th at 7:00pm to help celebrate the paperback release of Nick Flynn‘s memoir, This Is the Night Our House Will Catch Fire.  Nick will be in conversation with Exile VIP Rebecca Makkai!

Nick Flynn is a writer, playwright, and poet. His most recent books are This Is the Night Our House Will Catch Fire (2020), a hybrid memoir, and Stay: threads, collaborations, and conversations (2020), which documents twenty-five years of his collaborations with artists, filmmakers, and composers. He is also the author of five collections of poetry, including I Will Destroy You (2019). He has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Library of Congress, and is on the creative writing faculty at the University of Houston. His acclaimed memoir, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, was made into a film starring Robert DeNiro, and has been translated into fifteen languages.

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.
You can purchase their books through the respective links and each book comes with a signed bookplate!
This is administered as a free event through Eventrbrite. Should you wish to donate to Exile in Bookville’s cause there is an option on the registration page.

Click here to register for this free event!

on August 10 2021· Tagged: , , , , , , , , ,

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 July 15 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 9 2021· Tagged: , , , , , , , ,

Unabridged Bookstore Presents: Zak Salih’s Virtual Tour for “LET’S GET BACK TO THE PARTY” in conversation with Rebecca Makkai

It is 2015, weeks after the Supreme Court marriage equality ruling, and all Sebastian Mote wants is to settle down. A high school art history teacher, newly single and desperately lonely, he envies his queer students their freedom to live openly the youth he lost to fear and shame.

When he runs into his childhood friend Oscar Burnham at a wedding in Washington, D.C., he can’t help but see it as a second chance. Now thirty-five, the men haven’t seen each other in more than a decade. But Oscar has no interest in their shared history, nor in the sense of be­longing Sebastian craves. Instead, he’s outraged by what he sees as the death of gay culture: bars overrun with bachelorette parties, friends cou­pling off and having babies. For Oscar, confor­mity isn’t peace, it’s surrender.

While Oscar and Sebastian struggle to find their place in a rapidly changing world, each is drawn into a cross-generational friendship that treads the line between envy and obsession: Se­bastian with one of his students, Oscar with an older icon of the AIDS era. And as they collide again and again, both men must reckon not just with one another but with themselves.

Zak Salih lives in Washington, D.C. His writing has appeared in Crazyhorse, the Chattahoochee Review, the Millions, the Rumpus, and other publications. This is his first novel.

Rebecca Makkai will be joining Zak Salih to celebrate the release of Let’s Get Back To The Party.

To participate in this virtual event, sign up here. To purchase Let’s Get Back to the Party, begin an order here.

on February 26 2021· Tagged: , , , , ,

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