GARRARD CONLEY and TAYLOR LARSEN at Harvard Book Store

Harvard Book Store welcomes authors GARRARD CONLEY and TAYLOR LARSEN for a discussion of Conley’s new-to-paperback memoir, Boy Erased, and Larsen’s debut novel, Stranger, Father, Beloved.

About Boy Erased:
When Garrard was a nineteen-year-old college student, he was outed to his parents, and was forced to make a life-changing decision: either agree to attend a church-supported conversion therapy program that promised to “cure” him of homosexuality; or risk losing family, friends, and the God he had prayed to every day of his life. Through an institutionalized Twelve-Step Program heavy on Bible study, he was supposed to emerge heterosexual, ex-gay, cleansed of impure urges and stronger in his faith in God for his brush with sin. Instead, even when faced with a harrowing and brutal journey, Garrard found the strength and understanding to break out in search of his true self and forgiveness.

About Stranger, Father, Beloved:
In the tradition of Tom Perrotta’s Little Children, a debut novel about a wealthy man who has reached a crossroads after a lifetime of repression and denial, sending him—and his family—into a slow spiral towards a total breakdown.