What began as a short story eight years ago grew into Ted Thompson’s debut novel, The Land of Steady Habits. Thompson, a graduate of the Iowa Writer’s workshop, launched the novel at BookCourt in Brooklyn. Cupcakes were served.
Tova Mirvis returned to the Upper West Side to read from her new novel Visible City. The 82nd Street Barnes and Noble served a fitting host for the sprawling novel that unfolds in the surrounding neighborhood.
D. Foy’s debut novel, Made to Break was sixteen years in the making. It is the story of five friends trapped in a mountain cabin as they explore their various failures and vicious behavior. He read from the novel at McNally Jackson and was joined in conversation by Sean Madigan Hoen. Soho Press will release Hoen’s memoir, Songs Only You Know next month. It examines his crumbling family alongside his time as an indie musician.
Community Bookstore hosted a discussion between Kyle Minor and Vol 1 Brooklyn editor Jason Diamond. Minor’s story collection Praying Drunk (January 2014) has been more than a decade in the making and includes a novella. Diamond asked him about that and his future projects.
Marine Corps veteran Phil Klay joins the war story tradition with his new collection, Redeployment (March 2014). Powerhouse Arena hosted him and his former writing instructor, author Patrick McGrath for a conversation. Klay, who served as a Public Affairs Officer in Iraq, also holds an MFA degree from Hunter College.
WORD Bookstore’s Jersey City location hosted Dagmara Dominczyk and her husband, the actor Patrick Wilson, to discuss her novel, The Lullaby of Polish Girls (June 2013). The book was recently released in paperback, and as of today, a translated version has been released in Dominczyk’s native Poland.
Deji Olukotun’s debut novel, Nigerians in Space (January 2014), explores three interlocked narratives traversing time and space. Joel Whitney, editor and co-founder of Guernica, joined him at WORD Bookstore in Brooklyn to discuss the novel. As a way of introduction, Whitney describes the novel as a “noir-ish” crime novel.
Adelle Waldman’s The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. has been favorably compared to Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City (1985) as a portrayal of the contemporary New York City literary scene. McInerney himself drew the comparison when he sat down with Waldman in Barnes & Noble. Waldman, like the literary scene itself, focuses her story in Brooklyn. Though intentionally obscured, the novel unfolds unmistakingly in Fort Greene and Crown Heights. Amidst the rapid gentrification, Nathaniel (Nate) finds himself dating fellow freelance writer Hannah. Over the course of the novel, Nate’s inaction and apathy leads to the eventual unraveling of their relationship. At the most fundamental level, Nathaniel P. is the story of two people gradually allowing distance to taint their relationship.
Much is the same premise with Paul Rome’s We All Live In The Same Room. Narrator Tom lives with Raina and their son, Ben, in, as the title suggests, a one bedroom apartment. Its rent controlled, of course. Despite sharing the small space, like the characters of Waldman’s novel, Tom and Raina spend the duration of the story drifting ever farther away from each other. Though Tom and Raina are more proactive about hurting each other than Nate and Hannah, ultimately they are all victims of emotional unforseen emotional distance. Given the similarities, the two authors form an ideal pairing, and NYU Bookstore brought them together for a discussion moderated by Paul Morris of Pen America.