2 New Yorkers Evening: ARYN KYLE and DAVID GOODWILLIE

Aryn Kyle is the author of the bestselling and award-winning (and unforgettable) novel The God of Animals, and a graduate of the University of Montana writing program. Her short stories have appeared in many publications including Best New American Voices 2005 and Best American Short Stories 2007. Her story “Foaling Season” won a National Magazine Award for fiction for The Atlantic Monthly. She is also the recipient of the American Library Association’s Alex Award, the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, and others. She lives in New York City.

BOYS AND GIRLS LIKE YOU AND ME, an unforgettable collection of short stories “about the tender, terrifying path from youth to adulthood” (People), cements Kyle’s reputation as a brilliant chronicler of the female experience at all ages. With tenderness and dark humor, Kyle captures the ambivalence and uncertainty of adolescence and young womanhood, the loneliness and discontent that often accompany it, and the exquisite moments of joy, hope, and connection that illuminate it. “An accomplished, highly readable collection…The stories in BOYS AND GIRLS are darkly funny, with dialogue that is quippy and to the point; it’s the rare story collection that inspires a reader to go through it in one sitting…Days after reading them, these stories, in their admirable brevity, complexity, and completeness, have a way of hanging on in the mind.” —The Rumpus

David Goodwillie is the author of the novel American Subversive, a New York Times Notable Book of 2010, and the acclaimed memoir Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time. He has also played professional baseball, worked as a private investigator, and was an expert at Sotheby's auction house. A graduate of Kenyon College, he lives in New York City.

What does it take to turn an idealist into a radical? This question lies at the heart of Goodwillie’s extraordinary novel, AMERICAN SUBVERSIVE, a morally engaged, expertly written literary thriller that grapples with big questions about love, loyalty, and politics. In examining the connection between our collective apathy and the roots of insurrection, Goodwillie has crafted an intoxicating story of two Americans grasping for a foothold in a culture—and country—that’s crumbling around them. Intelligent and provocative, AMERICAN SUBVERSIVE is a first novel that establishes its author as a major new voice in American fiction. In the New York Times Book Review, Malena Watrous wrote, “[A] hip and quick paced literary thriller… Goodwillie excels at jet-black social satire in a style reminiscent of Bret Easton Ellis.”

“A new voice has entered the city—youthful, wise, and with an enthralling story to tell. Goodwillie’s rendering of an American woman seduced by radicalism skillfully examines the enduring themes of our lives: politics, media, loyalty and love.”  -- Gay Talese, author of A Writer’s Life