Tuesday, December 8, 2020

What's happening at virtual Boswell this week? Oscar Cásares, Lily King, Elaine Sciolino

Tuesday, December 8, 7:30 pm
Oscar Cásares, author of Where We Come From
in Conversation with Daniel Goldin and Tessa Bartels for a Virtual Event

Join us for a virtual conversation with Cásares, author of a stunning and timely novel about a Mexican-American family in Brownsville, Texas, that reluctantly becomes involved in smuggling immigrants into the United States. He’ll be in conversation with Goldin of Boswell Book Company and Bartels of the Hispanic Professionals Book Club as part of our read-the-book-first paperback event series. Register here for this event.

Oscar Cásares is author of Brownsville, a collection of stories that was an American Library Association Notable Book, and the novel Amigoland. He is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Copernicus Society of America, and the Texas Institute of Letters. Originally from Brownsville, he teaches creative writing at the University of Texas at Austin.

Tackling the crisis of U.S. immigration policy from a deeply human angle, Where We Come From explores through an intimate lens the ways that family history shapes us, how secrets can burden us, and how finding compassion and understanding for others can ultimately set us free. I read this book for the In-Store Lit Group and the response was very good. We'll be talking with book enthusiast Tess Bartels and the author about his second novel. I am comparing the author's writing to Kent Haruf!

Wednesday, December 9, 2 pm
Lily King, author of Writers and Lovers
in Conversation with Daniel Goldin and Lisa Baudoin for a Virtual Event

Readings from Oconomowaukee continues with a virtual visit from Lily King, the author of Euphoria. She’ll chat about Writers and Lovers with bookstore proprietors Goldin and Baudoin. Register here for this event. 

Writers and Lovers is one of the best reviewed novels of 2020. From Ron Charles, our in-house favorite critic, writing for The Washington Post: “Please don’t do this. Don’t write a novel about trying to write a novel. It’s cliche and insular and lazy. Just don’t do it. Unless it’s this novel - this wonderful, witty, heartfelt novel by Lily King titled Writers and Lovers.”

Blindsided by her mother’s sudden death and wrecked by a recent love affair, Casey Peabody has arrived in Massachusetts in the summer of 1997 without a plan. Her mail consists of wedding invitations and final notices from debt collectors. A former child golf prodigy, she now waits tables in Harvard Square and rents a tiny, moldy room at the side of a garage where she works on the novel she’s been writing for six years. At thirty-one, Casey is still clutching onto something nearly all her old friends have let go of: the determination to live a creative life. When she falls for two very different men at the same time, her world fractures even more. Casey’s fight to fulfill her creative ambitions and balance the conflicting demands of art and life is challenged in ways that push her to the brink.

Thursday, December 10, 5:30 pm
Elaine Sciolino, author of The Seine: The River That Made Paris
A Virtual Event

Alliance Française de Milwaukee and Boswell present an evening with Elaine Sciolino, author of The Only Street in Paris. Sciolino will chat about her latest, a book that is a love letter to Paris and the river that determined its destiny. Register for this event here.

Blending memoir, travelogue, and history, master storyteller and longtime foreign correspondent Sciolino explores the Seine through its lively characters - a bargewoman, a riverbank bookseller, a houseboat dweller, a famous cinematographer - and follows it from the remote plateaus of Burgundy through Paris and to the sea. The Seine is a vivid, enchanting portrait of the world’s most irresistible river.

Elaine Sciolino is a contributing writer and former Paris bureau chief for The New York Times. She is the author of the bestselling The Only Street in Paris. She writes from and has lived in Paris since 2002.

Visit the Boswell upcoming event page here.

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