What's going on this week? Gordon Korman, Quan Berry, Lan Samantha Chang in conversation with Chang-rae Lee

What's going on this week? Gordon Korman, Quan Berry, Lan Samantha Chang

Tuesday, February 22, 10 am
Gordon Korman, author of Operation Do-Over
A Virtual School Visit
Register for this event here.

We're thrilled to present a special virtual school visit from beloved author of children's books Gordon Korman, who joins us with a presentation about his latest, Operation Do-Over, a middle grade novel that asks, can time travel save a friendship? This virtual school presentation is open to the public so everyone can join in on the fun. Great for all fans of good kid's literature. And be sure to order your copy of Operation Do-Over right now, too!

Boswellian Jenny Chou offers up this recommendation: "I loved this middle-grade story about a second chance to save a friendship that crashed and burned during middle school. Gordon Korman has a wonderful knack for telling an emotionally wrenching story in a way that makes us laugh ourselves silly. He weaves the time travel aspect into the book by making it the subject of a science project that ties everything together - but can we change the future by redoing the past? That’s what keeps the pages turning. Middle grade fans should move this delightful book to the top of their 2022 reading list."

Gordon Korman published his first book at age fourteen and since then has written more than ninety middle grade and teen novels. Favorites include the New York Times bestselling Ungifted, Supergifted, and the Masterminds series.

Tuesday, February 22, 7 pm
Quan Barry, author of When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East
A Virtual Event
Register for this event here.

Boswell presents an evening with poet and novelist Quan Barry, author of We Ride Upon Sticks, the novel that was called “spellbinding” by O, The Oprah Magazine, for a conversation about her latest, a luminous novel that moves across a windswept Mongolia as estranged twin brothers make a journey of duty, conflict, and renewed understanding. Order your signed copy - it's not a bookplate!

Are our lives our own, or do we belong to something larger? When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East is a far-flung examination of our individual struggle to retain our convictions and discover meaning in a fast-changing world, as well as a meditation on accepting what simply is. Proving once again that she is a writer of immense range and imagination, Barry carries us across a terrain as unforgiving as it is beautiful and culturally varied as twin brothers travel from the western Altai mountains to the eerie starkness of the Gobi Desert to the ancient capital of Chinggis Khaan.

From the starred Booklist review: "An imaginative tour de force... Evincing the same dazzling talents that won high critical praise for We Ride upon Sticks, Barry vastly expands readers’ horizons, both geographical and metaphysical." Kirkus also offered a star review, calling Barry's latest "A dreamlike and lyrical journey steeped in the tenets of Tibetan Buddhism."

And here's a wonderful interview with Amy Quan Barry in Madison.com/Wisconsin State Journal, in which she discusses her first produced play: "Jumping genres feels right for Barry, who is fascinated by the nuances of each form of storytelling. She actually wrote The Mytilenean Debate more than a decade ago, and more recently submitted it to Forward Theater’s “Wisconsin Wrights New Play Festival” competition."

Born in Saigon and raised in Massachusetts, Quan Barry is author of the novels She Weeps Each Time You’re Born and We Ride Upon Sticks (winner of the 2020 ALA Alex Award), and four books of poetry, including Water Puppets (winner of the AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry and a PEN Open Book finalist). Barry’s first play, The Mytilenean Debate, premiers in the spring of 2022. She is the Lorraine Hansberry Professor of English at the UW–Madison.

Thursday, February 24, 7 pm
Lan Samantha Chang, author of The Family Chao
in Conversation with Chang-rae Lee for a Virtual Event
Register for this event here.

Boswell presents a virtual evening with Lan Samantha Chang, the acclaimed author of novels All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost and Inheritance, for a conversation about her latest book, The Family Chao, a Wisconsin-set novel that offers a highly entertaining portrait of a Chinese American family grappling with the dark undercurrents of a seemingly pleasant small town. In conversation with Chang-rae Lee. Cohosted by Books & Company of Oconomowoc. Signed bookplates available.

The residents of Haven, Wisconsin, have dined on the Fine Chao restaurant’s delicious Americanized Chinese food for thirty-five years, content to ignore any unsavory whispers about the family owners. Whether or not Big Leo Chao is honest, or his wife, Winnie, is happy, their food tastes good and their three sons earned scholarships to respectable colleges. But when the brothers reunite in Haven, the Chao family’s secrets and simmering resentments erupt at last.

From Publishers Weekly’s starred review: “An ingenious and cunning reboot of Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. The harrowing and humorous family drama is wrapped in a murder mystery... In this timely, trenchant, and thoroughly entertaining book, an immigrant family’s dreams are paid for in blood. For Chang, this marks a triumphant return.”

Lan Samantha Chang is an award-winning author of the story collection Hunger and three novels. A recent Berlin Prize Fellow, she also has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. Chang is the first Asian American and the first female director of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Chang-rae Lee is author of novels including Native Speaker, Aloft, and The Surrendered, winner of the Dayton Peace Prize and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. A 2021 winner of the Award of Merit for the Novel from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Chang-rae Lee teaches writing at Stanford University

Photo credits:

--Gordon Korman by Owen Kassimir  

--Lan Samantha Chang by  Ife Oluwa Nihinlola 

More information on the Boswell upcoming events page.