This event has passed
Avni Doshi: The First House w/ Elizabeth Winkler
Past event
Featured Book
The First House: A Novel
“Each page is sharp, piercing, and totally defiant of the expected.” —Douglas Stuart
“Doshi is among the finest prose stylists at work today.” —Katie Kitamura, author of Audition
From the Booker Prize finalist author of Burnt Sugar comes a riveting novel of rupture and rebirth, of one woman’s journey to understand the fault lines in her marriage, her home, and her family.
When my husband comes into the bedroom we have shared for thirteen years and tells me he doesn’t want to be married anymore, I reach for my neck. My head is missing.
A husband announces he is leaving, that he was never happy. A woman is left behind with their two children in the house they built together, reeling at this forced recasting of the story of their marriage. Everything becomes strange: an encounter at the grocery store, a looming cicada horde, a statue of Diana that suddenly appears in her neighbor’s yard. Or was it always there?
As she wades through the aftermath of her marriage, her complicated family resurfaces. Although close to her parents, her relationship with them is strained, and she is fully estranged from her older sister—the perfect daughter—who still lives at home and always disapproved of her husband. So when did the trouble begin? And where will she go from here?
When she was a child, an astrologer in India told her parents that the family would die in water. Ever since, they’ve avoided pools and lakes and the ocean; no one ever learned to swim. From the Booker finalist and beloved author of Burnt Sugar comes a brilliant story of betrayal, renunciation, and renewal, of a woman spiraling who swims to the other side and comes up for air.
This book will be available for purchase at the event.
About This Event
=From the Booker Prize finalist author of Burnt Sugar comes a riveting and lyrical novel of rupture and rebirth, of one woman’s journey to understand the fault lines in her marriage, her home, and her family.
Event guidelines: Each ticket includes either a copy of the featured book or a $10 Books Are Magic gift card. Additional copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event. A signing will follow the talk. The conversation will be livestreamed for free online here . As a reminder: If you are not feeling well, please do not come to the event, even if you have a ticket; email us and we'll work it out. If you have any questions regarding these guidelines or to request accessibility accommodations, please contact eventhelp@booksaremagic.net.
Featured Author
Doshi, Avni
Avni Doshi was born in New Jersey and lives in Dubai. She has a BA in art history from Barnard College in New York and a master’s in history of art from University College London. Her writing has appeared in British Vogue, Granta, and The Sunday Times (London). Her first novel, Burnt Sugar, was originally released in India under the title Girl in White Cotton, where it won the Sushila Devi Award. Upon publication in the UK, Burnt Sugar became a finalist for the Booker Prize. It was also longlisted for the Women’s Prize, became a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, was selected as one of The New York Times Book Review’s 100 Notable Books of the Year, and was named a Book of the Year by The Guardian, The Economist, The Spectator, and NPR. Burnt Sugar has been published in twenty-six languages.
About the Venue
Books are Magic · Brooklyn Heights
Welcome to the independent bookstore serving Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens and Brooklyn Heights! Books Are Magic is a family-owned independent bookstore with locations in Cobble Hill/Carroll Gardens and Brooklyn Heights in Brooklyn, committed to being a welcoming, friendly, and inclusive space for all people. We believe that books are indeed magic, and that literature is one of the best ways to create empathy, transportation, and transformation. We are enthusiastic about offering thoughtfully selected voices and stories on our shelves, and about hosting affordable events featuring emerging writers as well as long-adored authors. Books Are Magic is a place for children to feel comfortable, for young readers to grow into lifelong readers, and for our neighbors to be introduced to vibrant new books. Books Are Magic is owned by Emma Straub and Michael Fusco-Straub. You can read more about Emma Straub's books here.
Visit store pageMore at Books are Magic · Brooklyn Heights
Storytime w/ Anden Wilder: Elaine
A quirky chicken named Elaine journeys through the big city in search of artistic inspiration in this funny picture book about self-discovery—a perfect story to inspire young readers to explore their own creative pursuits! Meet Elaine: a big city chicken with a lot of love for the world. And what she loves the most is her city: the hustle and bustle, the tasty pizza, and best of all, the art. But when Elaine looks around, she sees all sorts of different artists. Painters. Sculptors. Performers. But what kind of artist is SHE? Come along with one ingenious chicken as she goes in search of what makes a true artist. Told with vibrant illustrations and witty text, this is a story about the beauty of sharing yourself with the world. Anden Wilder is an award-winning illustrator and the creator of picture books, including Scamp and Tulip’s Mess. When she isn’t making books, she also makes paintings and is a teacher to artists of all ages. Anden hopes to inspire kids to be their most creative and truest selves through her work. Event guidelines: RSVP is highly encouraged but not required. Additional copies of the event book will be available for purchase in-store. The reading will be followed by a book signing. As a reminder: If you are not feeling well, please do not come to the event, even if you have a ticket; email us and we'll work it out. If you have any questions regarding these guidelines or to request accessibility accommodations, please contact eventhelp@booksaremagic.net.
Lauren Elkin: Vocal Break w/ Rachel Syme
From the acclaimed author of Flâneuse and Art Monsters, a fierce, insistent, ecstatic investigation of the female voice, its power and vulnerabilities, and the ways women sing and speak their way through the world. For millennia, women’s raised voices have been called unruly, uncivilized, dangerous. Singing women were cast as sirens: mythical creatures who lured sailors to their death. A vocal break is where the voice shifts from lower to higher registers—from one thing to another. What can be made in this space of transition? Lauren Elkin draws on her own experiences as a young soprano in the 1990s as well as showcasing a full-throated, full range of other singers, including Édith Piaf, Maria Callas, Cyndi Lauper, Kathleen Hanna, Tori Amos, PJ Harvey, Beyoncé, FKA twigs, and Billie Eilish. Looking closely at the way power and identity shape our voices, she immerses readers in an eclectic soundscape, from musicals and pop music to folk, punk, and opera. As she seamlessly blends cultural history, criticism, memoir, and feminist manifesto, Elkin lays out how women have used their voices to defy convention, genre, capitalism, racism, sexism, and the forces that attempt to keep them quiet. What makes women’s singing so powerful—to the point at which others feel the need to control or manipulate it? Vocal Break is Elkin’s insistent, joyous call: Girls to the front, NOW! Event guidelines: Each ticket includes either a copy of the featured book or a $10 Books Are Magic gift card. Additional copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event. A signing will follow the talk. The conversation will be livestreamed for free online here . As a reminder: If you are not feeling well, please do not come to the event, even if you have a ticket; email us and we'll work it out. If you have any questions regarding these guidelines or to request accessibility accommodations, please contact eventhelp@booksaremagic.net.
Rachel Calnek-Sugin: Universe of Grace w/ Katie Yee
A dazzling, kaleidoscopic debut novel about the life of a precocious girl in Philadelphia trying to figure out who—or what—she might be. One afternoon, on a visit to the Bronx Zoo, a jaguar tells six-year-old Grace Goldberg-Li that she isn’t human. But this is something that Grace has already suspected. Her life seems normal, but no one else, not even her beloved sister seems to be experiencing things as brightly and painfully as she does. As she approaches adolescence, Grace begins to think that she might be an alien. Maybe this would explain the urge to steal every beautiful object she can find, or the peculiar voice in her head that’s fixated on the apocalypse of climate change, insisting that everyone she loves is going to die. In adulthood, Grace still doesn’t have the answer to the strangeness that seems to be outside and inside her. Is it the world that is unusual and falling apart? Or is it her? She will attempt, over and over, to remake herself and find a place in it. She will fall recklessly in love with a gorgeous doctoral student; she will merge into a tree during the pandemic; she will become the best employee that Wendy’s has ever seen; she will travel to the ends of the earth and keep going. Tender, profound, and endlessly imaginative, Rachel Calnek-Sugin’s Universe of Grace is a transcendent coming-of-age story in a world that’s uncertain and wondrous in equal measure. Covering the span of a single life and everything it touches, Universe of Grace shows us that we are each more interconnected, vast, and variable than we can ever know. Event guidelines: Each ticket includes either a copy of the featured book or a $10 Books Are Magic gift card. Additional copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event. A signing will follow the talk. The conversation will be livestreamed for free online here . As a reminder: If you are not feeling well, please do not come to the event, even if you have a ticket; email us and we'll work it out. If you have any questions regarding these guidelines or to request accessibility accommodations, please contact eventhelp@booksaremagic.net.