A VERY special afternoon with KHALED HOSSEINI
MONICA WESOLOWSKA / Holding Silvan: A Brief Life
“A tender, poignant and courageous narrative—insightful and beautifully written.” -- Abraham Verghese, Author of Cutting for Stone
In the
opening of Holding Silvan, Monica Wesolowska gives birth to her first
child, a healthy-seeming boy who is taken from her arms for “observation” when
he won’t stop crying. Within days, Monica and her husband have been given the
grimmest of prognoses for Silvan. They must make a choice about his life. The
story that follows is not of typical maternal heroism. There is no medicalmiracle
here. Instead, we find the strangest of hopes. In clear and unflinching prose,
this startling memoir bears witness not only to a son’s brief life but to the
evolution of the writer herself -- from Catholic girl yearning after sainthood
to maternal struggle to give her son the best she can. The result is a
page-turning testimony to the power of love. By raising ethical questions about
how a death can be good in the age of modern medicine, Holding Silvan becomes a paean to what makes life itself good.
Whether you have faced great loss or not, this book will change your life.
“This book taught me more about a mother’s love than anything I have ever read before or since.” -- Ayelet Waldman, author of Bad Mother
“I was swept away by this book. I’ll never forget it.” -- Julia Scheeres, author of Jesus Land and A Thousand Lives
“This book is brilliant.” -- Lidia Yuknavitch, Author of The Chronology of Water
Monica Wesolowska has published both fiction and memoir in numerous literary journals and anthologies including Best New American Voices 2000, TheCarolina Quarterly, Quarter After Eight, Literary Mama, and the New York Times bestseller My Little Red Book. A graduate of Reed College and a recipient of a fellowship from the Fine Arts Works Center in Provincetown, she has taught writing at UC Berkeley Extension for a decade.
- Street:
- 1644 Haight St.
- City:
- San Francisco ,
- Province:
- California
- Postal Code:
- 94117-2816
- Country:
- United States
TAO LIN / Taipei (in conversation with Jesse Nathan)
Tao Lin, one of our most discussed and polarizing writers, has emerged as the confessor of the Millennial Generation. His new novel, Taipei, enters the broad conversation many are having about today’s youth -- countless articles from prominent media outlets have asked why so many embark on adulthood feeling as if they have no purpose. They may not lack ambition but are grappling with today’s recession economy. Many feel that their competence and dedication in following the rule book are going unrewarded.
Lin’s
writing evokes this disillusionment by depicting his characters’ vacancy, and
excessive drug use, with such extremity that it’s as if he’s whittled life as
he sees it down to its barest realities. As David Haglund stated in The 
London Review of Books, “Lin
captures certain qualities of contemporary life better than many writers, in
part because he dispenses with so much that is expected of current fiction.”
The very structure of his prose and the realism of his dialogue expose the
sense of ennui that appears so rampant in this generation of Americans. In Taipei, the toll this takes on his characters’
capacity to sustain emotional connections with others is powerful.
Taipei opens as Paul, a writer living in Brooklyn, comically navigates New York City’s art and literary scenes, makes tenuous friendships with other young artists, and ends yet another relationship, unsure of how he lost interest in it. The reader follows Paul as he embarks on a book tour and eventually confronts his roots in Taipei, Taiwan. Seeking out his next love interest leads him from the Internet, where he meets Erin, to an impulsive Las Vegas wedding. Along the way movies are made with laptop cameras, massive amounts of drugs are ingested, and the effects, documented thoroughly on the Internet—whether by video or live-tweet—are deeply hilarious. Taipei is a depiction of living life on the fringe in America, and an ode -- or lament -- to the way we live now.
Tao Lin is the author of the novels Richard Yates and Eeeee Eee Eeee, the novella Shoplifting from American Apparel, the story collection Bed, and the poetry collections cognitive-behavioral therapy and you are a little bit happier than i am. His stories and poems have been anthologized, including in the Mississippi Review 30 Year Anthology; he has lectured on writing and visual art at Kansas City Art Institute, Columbia College Chicago, Vassar, Pratt, Duke, LSU, and other universities, including Sarah Lawrence’s graduate writing program. He is the founder and editor of the literary press Muumuu House,and his work has been translated into twelve languages. He lives in Manhattan.
“Tao Lin writes from moods that less radical writers would let pass—from laziness, from vacancy, from boredom. And it turns out that his report from these places is moving and necessary, not to mention frequently hilarious.”
-- Miranda July
“[Richard Yates] is like a ninety-foot pigeon. You've never seen anything like it before, and yet it is somehow exactly like the world we live in.”
-- Daniel Handler, author of Adverbs
- Street:
- 1644 Haight St.
- City:
- San Francisco ,
- Province:
- California
- Postal Code:
- 94117-2816
- Country:
- United States
