Produced by The Bay Area Book Festival
Tickets include an exclusive signed copy of A Swim in a Pond in the Rain!
ABOUT THIS EVENT
Part hilarious prophet, part tender interpreter of the human condition, Booker Prize winner George Saunders (Lincoln in the Bardo) has been called “the only writer who predicted 2020.” His tales, which generally are “not like anything anyone has written before” (The Atlantic), mix razor-sharp absurdism with a huge heart. They’re routinely celebrated with headlines like “George Saunders has written the best book you’ll read this year” (that was the New York Times on Tenth of December in 2013) or “a luminous feat of generosity and humanism” (Colson Whitehead on Lincoln in the Bardo in 2016). Or, as Khaled Hosseini put it, “Saunders makes you feel like you’re reading fiction for the first time.”
How does he do it? In our once-in-a-lifetime live, virtual event, Saunders teams up with his dear friend and mentor, Tobias Wolff (This Boy’s Life) — one of Barack Obama’s National Medal of the Arts honorees — to celebrate Saunders’ first book in four years, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life. They’ll discuss how to channel the craft of four Russian greats (Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol) to create lives — both on and off the page — imbued with the profound humanity these masters awaken in readers: a recognition of our fragile, surreal, frequently funny, sometimes tragic, always beautiful existence. Join these two literary legends (and their favorite literary ancestors) for an unforgettable Friday night as together we kick off a new year with warmth, wit, and wisdom.
Note: this event will be a one-time-only, live, interactive virtual experience, not to be re-aired, and both space and signed books are limited. Get your tickets now!
ABOUT THE BAY AREA BOOK FESTIVAL #Unbound
The Bay Area Book Festival #UNBOUND is the online incarnation of the annual Bay Area Book Festival, which fills Downtown Berkeley with hundreds of notable authors and tens of thousands of readers. #UNBOUND programs present authors and activists at the top of their game to inform, inspire, console, and engage you.
Click here to learn more about The Bay Area Book Festival and how you can get involved.