All posts by Emily Berg

Hilma Wolitzer in conversation with Judy Blume

Books & Books presents

Author HILMA WOLITZER
in conversation with
JUDY BLUME

Tuesday, September 14th at 7:00 p.m.

WATCH A RECORDING OF THE EVENT HERE

Books and Books @ the Studios welcomes Hilma Wolitzer, award winning author of the new short story collection Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket. Wolitzer will appear via zoom with store founder Judy Blume.

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In the title story, a bystander tries to soothe a woman who seems to have cracked under the pressures of her life. And in several linked stories throughout, the relationship between the narrator and her husband unfolds in telling and often hilarious vignettes. Of their time and yet timeless, Wolitzer’s stories zero in on the intimacies of the domestic sphere with wit, candor, grace, and an acutely observant eye. Brilliantly capturing the tensions and contradictions of daily life, TODAY A WOMAN WENT MAD IN THE SUPERMARKET is full of heart and insight, providing a lens into a world that was often unseen at the time, and often overlooked now—reintroducing a beloved writer to be embraced by a whole new generation of readers.

About the author: 

Hilma Wolitzer is a recipient of Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, and a Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award. She has taught at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, New York University, Columbia University, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Her first published story appeared when she was thirty- six, and her first novel eight years later. Her many stories and novels have drawn critical praise for illuminating the dark interiors of the American home. She lives in New York City.

Virtual Event with RJ Hoffmann

Books & Books presents

Author RJ HOFFMANN
in conversation with Patricia McNair

Thursday, May 27th at 7:00 p.m.

THIS EVENT HAS ENDED BUT YOU CAN WATCH THE RECORDING HERE

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Books and Books @ the Studios welcomes RJ Hoffman, author of the new novel Other People’s Children. Hoffmann will appear via zoom with author Patricia McNair.

In Other People’s Children, three mothers make excruciating choices to protect their families and their dreams—choices that put them at decided odds against one another. You will root for each one of them and wonder just how far you’d go in the same situation. This riveting debut is a thoughtful exploration of love and family, and a heart-pounding page-turner you’ll find impossible to put down.

Publisher’s Weekly called Other People’s Children a “high-stakes exploration of how far people will go to protect their family…A nail-biting examination of socioeconomic disparity and loyalty…[The] believable characters don’t disappoint, and [Hoffmann’s] engrossing look at fraught issues piques. This sharp tale of heartache, loss, and redemption resonates.”

About the author

RJ Hoffmann was born and raised in St. Louis and received an MFA in fiction from Columbia College Chicago. Hoffmann’s writing has appeared in Barely South ReviewThe SunHarpur PalateThe Roanoke ReviewBooth, and Lunch Ticket. He is the winner of The Madison Review’s 2018 Chris O’Malley Prize for Fiction and a finalist for The Missouri Review’s 2019 Jeffrey E. Smith Editors Prize. He lives in Elmhurst, Illinois with his wife and two children.

About the moderator

Patricia Ann McNair’s recently released short story collection, Responsible Adults, was selected as a Legacy Series book by Cornerstone Press, and was named a Distinguished Favorite by the Independent Press Awards. Her essay collection, And These are The Good Times was named a finalist for the Montaigne Medal for most thought-provoking book of 2017. The Temple of Air, McNair’s debut story collection, received the Chicago Writers Association Book of the Year Award, Southern Illinois University’s Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award, and the Society of Midland Authors (US) Finalist Award. She teaches in the English and Creative Writing Department of Columbia College Chicago.

Climate Change and Fiction: A Virtual Event

Books & Books and Coral Restoration Foundation present . . .
CLIMATE CHANGE & FICTION: A VIRTUAL EVENT
with authors Julie Carrick Dalton, Angie Hockman & Claire Holroyde.

Thursday, May 6th at 7:00 p.m.

THE LIVE EVENT IS OVER BUT YOU CAN WATCH THE RECORDING HERE

BUY THE BOOKS HERE 

Books and Books @ the Studios is excited to team up with Coral Restoration Foundation to  host a panel of three debut fiction authors whose work incorporates climate change and environmental issues into fiction.

This event will be held through Zoom on Thursday, May 6th at 7:00 p.m.

Julie Carrick Dalton (Waiting For the Night Song – Forge Books), Angie Hockman (ShippedGallery Books) and Claire Holroyde (The Effort – Grand Central Publishing) each celebrated the publication of their first novels in January 2021. Dalton and Holroyde have both published numerous non-fiction articles and short stories while Hockman has had careers in law, education, and eco-tourism. 

The three authors are members of the Climate Fiction Writer’s League, a group of authors who believe in the necessity of climate action, immediately and absolutely and use fiction to inspire passion, empathy and action in readers. 

Though their books span genres; literary fiction, sci-fi and romance, all have embraced and explored the powerful impact that changes to the earth have on a individuals and their story.  

In Waiting for the Night Song a forestry researcher is called back to her childhood home to face
up to a long-buried secret. There she must decide what she is willing to sacrifice to protect the people and the forest she loves, as drought, foreclosures, and wildfire spark tensions between displaced migrant farmworkers and locals.

Shipped sets its protagonist in the Galapagos, with a nod to eco-tourism and the benefits of finally experiencing the beauty of Earth on the book’s work focused characters. 

The Effort follows people around the world as they unite to prevent a global catastrophe. Based on real-life impact scenarios and inspired by actual event explores the deadly consequences of deliberate non-cooperation between nations.

This event is co-sponsored by Coral Restoration Foundation™, the largest coral reef restoration organization in the world. Founded in response to the wide-spread loss of the dominant coral species on Florida’s Coral Reef the organization grows and returns endangered species of coral to the wild to restore reef sites to a healthy state. Please visit their website (www.coralrestoration.org) to donate and to find information on how to get involved in the important work that they do for the Florida Keys. 

This event is free and open to the public though preregistration is encouraged.

A Virtual Event with Michael Patrick F. Smith

Books & Books presents…
A *VIRTUAL* EVENT MICHAEL PATRICK F. SMITH
IN CONVERSATION WITH SHAWN HATOSY
to discuss Smith’s book The Good Hand

THE LIVE EVENT IS OVER BUT YOU CAN WATCH THE RECORDING HERE

READ AN EXCLUSIVE Q&A WITH THE AUTHOR

Like thousands of restless men left unmoored in the wake of the 2008 economic crash, Michael Patrick Smith arrived in the fracking boomtown of Williston, North Dakota five years later homeless, unemployed, and desperate for a job. Renting a mattress on a dirty flophouse floor, he slept boot to beard with migrant men who came from all across America and as far away as Jamaica, Africa, and the Philippines. They ate together, drank together, argued like crows, and searched for jobs they couldn’t get back home. Smith’s goal was to find the hardest work he could do—to find out if he could do it. He was hired on in the oil patch where he toiled fourteen hour shifts from summer’s 100 degree dog days to deep into winter’s bracing whiteouts, all the while wrestling with the demons of a turbulent past, his broken relationships with women, and the haunted memories of a family riven by violence.

THE GOOD HAND is a saga of fear, danger, exhaustion, suffering, loneliness, and grit that explores the struggles of America’s marginalized boomtown workers—the rough-hewn, castoff, seemingly disposable men who do an indispensable job that few would exalt: oil field hands who, in the age of climate change, put the gas in our tanks and the food in our homes. Smith, who had pursued theater and played guitar in New York, observes this world with a critical eye; yet he comes to love his coworkers, forming close bonds with Huck, a goofy giant of a young man whose lead foot and quick fists get him into trouble with the law, and The Wildebeest, a foul-mouthed, dip-spitting truck driver who torments him but also trains him up, and helps Smith “make a hand.”

Smith brings musicality, sharp dialogue, and meticulous characterization to THE GOOD HAND and writes with great heart, humor, and the broken-in details of lived experience, providing a vivid window into the world of working-class men during the Bakken fracking boom in North Dakota. While ultimately this is a book about the value of hard work, male bonding, father-son relationships, and the boomtown mentality, it is also a book, as proven by the example of Michael, about how to become a “good hand” at writing and at creating something—about the value of artistry and creativity as good work.

This “affecting snapshot of blue-collar America in a singular place and time” (Booklist) marks the debut of a talented writer whom we are sure to hear more of.

Signed personalized copies available. If you’d like your copy of The Good Hand to be signed to you leave that information in the comments of your order.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Michael Patrick F. Smith is a folksinger, playwright and current Artist in Residence at The Studios of Key West. His plays, including Woody Guthrie Dreams and Ain’t No Sin, have been staged in Baltimore and New York. As a musician, he has shared the stage with folk luminaries such as Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, as well as several prominent indie rock bands. Smith has also worked as a stage actor, a bartender, junk hauler, furniture mover, book store clerk, contractor, receptionist, event producer, driver, office temp, stage hand, waiter, security guard, set fabricator, legal assistant, grocer, oil field hand, and now writer. THE GOOD HAND is his first book. 

ABOUT THE MODERATOR:

Shawn Hatosy currently appears as Andrew “Pope” Cody on TNT’s family crime drama Animal Kingdom. He is in production on the 6th & final season and is also one of the show’s directors. Among Hatosy’s acting credits are the films The FacultyAnywhere But HereIn & OutFactory Girl, The CoolerOutside Providence, Alpha Dog and more. In the realm of critically lauded telefilms, Hatosy starred as John McCain in Faith Of My Fathers and played lead roles in Frank Pierson’s Peabody Award-winning Showtime drama Soldier’s Girl and the Emmy®-nominated Witness Protection. Originally from Ijamsville, Maryland, Hatosy currently resides in Los Angeles.

 

Books & Books is turning 5!

BIRTHDAY PARADE AND CELEBRATION
SATURDAY, FEB. 13th 2021
1-3pm

Books & Books at the Studios is turning 5! 

We want to celebrate with all of you, the customers that have helped us have a successful 5 years of bookselling. In person parties still aren’t a reality for us so to celebrate safely we’re inviting everyone to join us in a birthday parade.

Decorate your car, bike or scooter and come by the store to show off your work between 1pm and 3pm on Saturday, February 13th. We’ll snap a photo of your decorative mobile and put it up on our website. Online voting will determine a winner to receive a store gift certificate for $55.

We’re also handing out mini cupcakes and special edition bookmarks that day while supplies last. 

No pre-registration necessary. Just include the phrase “Happy Birthday Books & Books” in decorations to be entered to win the gift card. Voting will open at 5pm on 2/13 and run through 2/16 at 5pm on our website. Winner will be announced Wednesday, 2/17.

An Evening with Susan Conley and Judy Blume

Books & Books presents…
An Evening with Susan Conley and Judy Blume
To celebrate the publication of Landslide

 

Tuesday, March 2nd, 7:30pm

REGISTER FOR THE LIVESTREAM HERE

From the author of Elsey Come Home, a stunning novel about a mother caring for her two teenage sons while the crumbling fishing industry her New England community relies on threatens to collapse around them.

After a fishing accident leaves her husband hospitalized across the border in Canada, Jill is left to look after her teenage boys–“the wolves”–alone. Nothing comes easy in their remote corner of Maine: money is tight; her son Sam is getting into more trouble by the day; her eldest, Charlie, is preoccupied with a new girlfriend; and Jill begins to suspect her marriage isn’t as stable as she once believed. As one disaster gives way to the next, she begins to think that it’s not enough to be a caring wife and mother anymore–not enough to show up when needed, to nudge her boys in the right direction, to believe everything will be okay. But how to protect this life she loves, this household, this family?

With remarkable poise and startling beauty, Landslide ushers us into a modern household where, for a family at odds, Instagram posts, sex-positivity talks, and old fishing tales mingle to become a kind of love language. It is a beautiful portrait of a family, as compelling as it is moving, and raises the question of how to remain devoted when the eye of the storm closes in.

ORDER THE BOOK NOW

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

SUSAN CONLEY grew up in Maine. She is the author of four previous books including Elsey Come Home. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Harvard Review, New England Review, and Ploughshares. She has received multiple fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, as well as from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Maine Arts Commission, and the Massachusetts Arts Council. She has won the Maine Literary Award and the Maine Award for Publishing Excellence. She is a founder of the Telling Room, a youth creative writing center in Portland, Maine, where she lives and teaches on the faculty of the Stonecoast Writing Program.

 

ABOUT THE MODERATOR:

Judy Blume spent her childhood in Elizabeth, New Jersey, making up stories inside her head. Adults as well as children will recognize such Blume titles as Are You There God? It’s Me, MargaretBlubber; and the five book series about the irrepressible Fudge. She has also written four novels for adults, In the Unlikely EventSummer SistersSmart Women, and Wifey, all of them New York Times bestsellers. Four years ago Blume and her husband, George Cooper, longing for a bookstore in Key West where they live, founded the independent, non-profit Books & Books @ The Studios.  “After 50 years of writing, I’m enjoying meeting so many readers and introducing them to some of my favorite authors.”