Photo credit: Sean Mewshaw
Join us Tuesday, February 26, at 6pm, as Michael Mewshaw launches his newest book, THE LOST PRINCE, an examination of his friendship with the author Pat Conroy. Pat Conroy was America’s poet laureate of family dysfunction. A larger-than-life character and the author of such classics as The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini, Conroy was remembered by everybody for his energy, his exuberance, and his self-lacerating humor.
Michael Mewshaw’s THE LOST PRINCE is an intimate memoir of his friendship with Pat Conroy, one that involves their families and those days in Rome when they were both young—when Conroy went from being a popular regional writer to an international bestseller. Family snapshots beautifully illustrate that time. Shortly before his forty-ninth birthday, Conroy telephoned Mewshaw to ask a terrible favor. With great reluctance, Mewshaw did as he was asked—and never saw Pat Conroy again.
Although they never managed to reconcile their differences completely, Conroy later urged Mewshaw to write about “me and you and what happened . . . i know it would cause much pain to both of us. but here is what that story has that none of your others have.” THE LOST PRINCE is Mewshaw’s fulfillment of a promise.
Michael Mewshaw‘s five decade career includes award-winning fiction, nonfiction, literary criticism and investigative journalism. He is the author of the nonfiction works Sympathy for the Devil: Four Decades of Friendship with Gore Vidal and Between Terror and Tourism; the novel Year of the Gun; and the memoir Do I Owe You Something? He spends much of his time in Key West.
Praise for THE LOST PRINCE
“In THE LOST PRINCE Michael Mewshaw sets down one of the most gripping stories of friendship I’ve ever read.” —Daniel Menaker, author of My Mistake: A Memoir
“THE LOST PRINCE: A SEARCH FOR PAT CONROY is a book about male bonding rituals and reversals, but it’s also about so much more than that. It’s about how perplexed and inadequately
prepared we can be as characters who pop up in other people’s lives. It’s about unknowability
and its repercussions. It’s a fluidly written, fascinating book about Michael Mewshaw and Pat Conroy caught in the crossbeams of past and present, fated to overlap, bond, retreat, and then—as Mewshaw clearly hopes—to unite in a different configuration a final time.” — Ann Beattie, author of The Accomplished Guest
Tuesday, April 9, at 6pm, a book launch party and book signing with Ann Beattie, author of 
At a boarding school in New Hampshire, Ben joins the honor society led by Pierre LaVerdere, an enigmatic, brilliant, yet perverse teacher who instructs his students not only about how to reason, but how to prevaricate. As the years go by, LaVerdere’s covert and overt instruction lingers in his students’ lives as they seek some sense of purpose or meaning. Ben feels the pace of his life accelerating and views his intimate relationships as less and less fulfilling; there seems to be a subtext he’s not able to access. And what, really, did Bailey Academy teach him?
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Thursday, March 28, at 6pm, a reading and book signing with Joan Jacobs Brumberg, author of FASTING GIRLS & THE BODY PROJECT. Join us for a fascinating and timely discussion about women, girls, body image and social change.
Winner of four major awards, the updated edition of Joan Jacobs Brumberg’s FASTING GIRLS, presents a history of women’s food-refusal dating back as far as the sixteenth century. Here is a tableau of female self-denial: medieval martyrs who used starvation to demonstrate religious devotion, “wonders of science” whose families capitalized on their ability to survive on flower petals and air, silent screen stars whose strict “slimming” regimens inspired a generation. Here, too, is a fascinating look at how the cultural ramifications of the Industrial Revolution produced a disorder that continues to render privileged young women helpless. Incisive, compassionate, illuminating, FASTING GIRLS offers real understanding to victims and their families, clinicians, and all women who are interested in the origins and future of this complex, modern and characteristically female disease.
A hundred years ago, women were lacing themselves into corsets and teaching their daughters to do the same. The ideal of the day, however, was inner beauty: a focus on good deeds and a pure heart. Today American women have more social choices and personal freedom than ever before. But fifty-three percent of our girls are dissatisfied with their bodies by the age of thirteen, and many begin a pattern of weight obsession and dieting as early as eight or nine. Why?
ABOUT THE BOOK: Avery Bloom, who’s bookish, intense, and afraid of many things, particularly deep water, lives in New York City. Bett Devlin, who’s fearless, outgoing, and loves all animals as well as the ocean, lives in California. What they have in common is that they are both twelve years old, and are both being raised by single, gay dads.
Tuesday, January 29, at 6pm, a meet & greet and book signing with Key West designer Debra Butler, contributing designer to SOME LIKE IT HOT.
From the widely praised author of Paris Was the Place — a shattering new novel that bravely delves into the darkest corners of addiction, marriage, and motherhood
Wednesday, February 6, at 6pm, a reading, discussion and book signing with Andrew Furman, author of GOLDENS ARE HERE.
In GOLDENS ARE HERE, Andrew Furman imagines with great empathy the individual members of the Golden family, their unique struggles and dreams, during a single tumultuous citrus season. Isaac Golden must reckon between his ambition to create the perfect fruit and the business realities bearing down upon him given the booming postwar demand for cheap frozen concentrate. His beautiful wife, Melody, finds herself testing the boundaries that had so clearly governed her more conventional life in suburban Philadelphia, and their chronically ill son, Eli, wishes only to muster his strength so that he might enjoy the wide-open outdoors and see a bobcat.
Friday, February 8, at 6pm, a reading, discussion and book signing with Michelle C. Johnson, author of SKILL IN ACTION: RADICALIZING YOUR YOGA PRACTICE TO CREATE A JUST WORLD.
Michelle is an author, yoga teacher, social justice activist, licensed clinical social worker and Dismantling Racism trainer. She writes, “I approach my life and work from a place of empowerment, embodiment and integration. With a deep understanding of trauma and the impact that it has on the mind, body, spirit and heart, much of my work focuses on helping people better understand how power and privilege operate in their life. I explore how privilege, power and oppression affects the physical, emotional, mental, spiritual and energy body.”
The plan was simple: foment a small-scale conflict in Eastern Ukraine that will prevent the vast Ukrainian shale gas field from being tapped. Should the project succeed, Leviathan Global’s billionaire founder stands to profit mightily from the sale of gas reserves in Slovakia. But when a disillusioned staffer named Hugh Eckhart uncovers a dossier containing bank accounts laying out the conspiracy, things begin to unravel.