Mark Guerin Debut Novel Book Launch- YOU CAN SEE MORE FROM UP HERE at Porter Square Books

“In this novel, author Guerin beautifully captures the powerful contradictions of the relationship between father and son, which combines elements of friendship and antagonism. The author only gradually discloses Walker’s epiphanies about his dad, which not only transform the protagonist’s personal opinion of him, but also the future arc of his own life. The prose is confident and confessional throughout, and Guerin draws the reader into the compelling story by having Walker unflinchingly reveal his sense of disappointment in himself. Like the journalist he is, Walker clamors for the truth, whether it’s consoling or not. A poignantly told story of ruminative remembrance.”– Kirkus Reviews

In 2004, when middle-aged Walker Maguire is called to the deathbed of his estranged father, his thoughts return to 1974. He’d worked that summer at the auto factory where his dad, an unhappily retired Air Force colonel, was employed as plant physician. Witness to a bloody fight falsely blamed on a Mexican immigrant, Walker kept quiet, fearing his white co-workers and tyrannical father. His secret snowballs into lies, betrayals and eventually the disappearance of the Mexican’s family, leading to a life-long rift between father and son that can only be mended by bringing 1974 back to life in 2004 to reveals its long-hidden truths.

Mark Guerin is a 2014 graduate of Grub Street’s Novel Incubator program in Boston. He also has an MFA from Brandeis University and is a winner of an Illinois Arts Council Grant, the Mimi Steinberg Award for Playwriting and Sigma Tau Delta’s Eleanor B. North Poetry Award. A contributor to the novelist’s blog, Dead Darlings, he is also a playwright, copywriter and journalist. He currently resides in Harpswell, Maine, with his wife, Carol, and two Brittany Spaniels. YOU CAN SEE MORE FROM UP HERE will be his first published novel.

STEPHEN MCCAULEY, My Ex-Life

Porter Square Books welcomes STEPHEN MCCAULEY, author of the novel, My Ex-Life.

David Hedges’s life is coming apart at the seams. His job helping San Francisco rich kids get into the colleges of their (parents’) choice is exasperating; his younger boyfriend has left him; and the beloved carriage house he rents is being sold. His solace is a Thai takeout joint that delivers 24/7.

The last person he expects to hear from is Julie Fiske. It’s been decades since they’ve spoken, and he’s relieved to hear she’s recovered from her brief, misguided first marriage. To him.

Julie definitely doesn’t have a problem with marijuana (she’s given it up completely, so it doesn’t matter if she gets stoned almost daily) and the Airbnb she’s running out of her seaside house north of Boston is neither shabby nor illegal. And she has two whole months to come up with the money to buy said house from her second husband before their divorce is finalized. She’d just like David’s help organizing college plans for her 17-year-old daughter.

That would be Mandy. To quote Barry Manilow, Oh Mandy. While she knows she’s smarter than most of the kids in her school, she can’t figure out why she’s making so many incredibly dumb and increasingly dangerous choices?

When David flies east, they find themselves living under the same roof (one David needs to repair). David and Julie pick up exactly where they left off thirty years ago–they’re still best friends who can finish each other’s sentences. But there’s one broken bit between them that no amount of home renovations will fix.

In prose filled with hilarious and heartbreakingly accurate one-liners, Stephen McCauley has written a novel that examines how we define home, family, and love. Be prepared to laugh, shed a few tears, and have thoughts of your own ex-life triggered. (Throw pillows optional.)

Stephen McCauley is the author of six previous novels, including The Object of My Affection, True Enough, and Alternatives to Sex. Many have been national bestsellers, and three have been made into feature films. The New York Times Book Review dubbed McCauley “the secret love child of Edith Wharton and Woody Allen,” and he was named a Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture. His fiction, reviews, and articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Harper’s, Vogue, and many other publications. He currently serves as Co-Director of Creative Writing at Brandeis University. He has several properties listed on Airbnb in Massachusetts and New York and owns a total of zero toss pillows.

CHERYL SUCHORS: Book Launch and After Party for 48 Peaks

CHERYL SUCHORS will launch her memoir 48 PEAKS, Hiking and Healing in the White Mountains, at Porter Square Books in Cambridge, followed by a celebration upstairs at neighboring Christopher’s Restaurant.

Hiking is about the last thing forty-eight year old CHERYL SUCHORS is built for. Yet despite a flimsy body and fear of heights, she decides her mid-life success depends on hiking the tallest, most grueling White Mountains in New Hampshire. All forty-eight of them. In the ten years it takes her, she overcomes breast cancer and the loss of her hiking buddy. She’s forced to acknowledge that mastery alone isn’t enough—she must connect with friends and with nature to feel nourished and enriched, creating her own definition of success.

 

STEVE ALMOND on “Bad Stories” at Porter Square Books

Join STEVE ALMOND and musician ALISTAIR MOOCK for an evening of reading, agitation, and protest music.

Like a lot of Americans, STEVE ALMOND spent the weeks after the 2016 election lying awake, in a state of dread and bewilderment. The problem wasn’t just the election, but the fact that nobody could explain, in any sort of coherent way, why America had elected a cruel, corrupt, and incompetent man to the Presidency. Bad Stories: What the Hell Just Happened to Our Country is Almond’s effort to make sense of our historical moment, to connect certain dots that go unconnected amid the deluge of hot takes and think pieces. Almond looks to literary voices–from Melville to Orwell, from Bradbury to Baldwin–to help explain the roots of our moral erosion as a people.

The book argues that Trumpism is a bad outcome arising directly from the bad stories we tell ourselves. To understand how we got here, we have to confront our cultural delusions: our obsession with entertainment, sports, and political parody, the degeneration of our free press into a for-profit industry, our enduring pathologies of race, class, immigration, and tribalism. Bad Stories is a lamentation aimed at providing clarity. It’s the book you can pass along to an anguished fellow traveler with the promise, This will help you understand what the hell happened to our country.

STEVE ALMOND is the author of eight books of fiction and nonfiction, including the New York Times bestsellers Candyfreak and Against Football. His short stories have been anthologized widely, in the Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, Best American Erotica, and Best American Mysteries series. His essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, and elsewhere. He teaches at the Nieman Fellowship for Journalism at Harvard, and hosts the New York Times podcast “Dear Sugars” with fellow writer Cheryl Strayed.

Book Launch: SUSAN TAN’s “Cilla Lee-Jenkins: This Book Is a Classic”

About the Book:

Priscilla “Cilla” Lee-Jenkins has just finished her (future) bestselling memoir, and now she’s ready to write a Classic. This one promises to have everything: Romance, Adventure, and plenty of Drama–like Cilla’s struggles to “be more Chinese,” be the perfect flower girl at Aunt Eva’s wedding, and learn how to share her best friend.

In Cilla Lee-Jenkins: This Book Is a Classic, author Susan Tan seamlessly weaves experiences as a Chinese American with universal stories about being a big sister, making friends, and overcoming fears. Cilla Lee-Jenkins will bulldoze her way into your heart in this winning middle grade novel about family, friendship, and finding your voice.

About the author:

SUSAN TAN has lived many places in her life, but calls Concord, Massachusetts, home. She grew up in a mixed-race family, and, like Cilla Lee-Jenkins, had very little hair until the age of five. After studying at Williams College, she earned her PhD from the University of Cambridge, where she studied children’s literature. She currently lives in Somerville, enjoys frequent trips to Chinatown to eat tzuck sang, and teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.

Poets & Pints at Aeronaut Brewery

Join Porter Square Books at Aeronaut brewery for a celebration of local poetry: Poets & Pints. This event will feature a social hour from 6-7 in which you can grab a beer and converse with the poets, hosts, and other poetry fans. The formal reading will be from 7-8 and will feature three local poets reading from their latest works.

This month’s Poets & Pints will feature Duy Doan, winner of the 2017 Yale Series of Younger Poets, in one of Duy’s first readings from his debut collection We Play a Game.

Porter Square Books Presents: Poets & Pints Open Mic

Celebrate Valentine’s Day by reading your favorite love poem or poem about love or poem about all of the complexities and challenges of love at Porter Square Books’ first ever Poets & Pints Open Mic. As with other Poets & Pints this event will be taking place at the Duck Village Stage at Aeronaut Brewing. Sign ups will begin at 6PM during the normal Poets & Pints social hour and the “Open Mic of Love, etc” will follow a reading by NAUSHEEN EUSUF.

A few other details about the open mic: One poem per person. The poem must be written by someone else and be under five minutes long. In terms of the “theme,” love is a complicated and often contradictory concept so feel free to be creative in what you consider a “love poem.” The host from Porter Square Books will be there to answer any other questions.

The event will feature a social hour from 6-7 in which you can grab a beer and converse with the poets, hosts, and other poetry fans. The formal reading will be from 7-8 and will feature a local poets reading from her latest work and an open mic.

NAUSHEEN EUSUF is a PhD candidate in English at Boston University, and a graduate of the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The American Scholar, Southwest Review, Salmagundi, PN Review, Literary Imagination, Smartish Pace, World Literature Today, and The Best American Poetry 2018. Her first collection of poems, titled Not Elegy, But Eros, was recently published by NYQ Books (US) and Bengal Lights Books (Bangladesh).

The Immigration Handbook, a poetry collection by UK poet CAROLINE SMITH

Porter Square Books is pleased to host UK poet/immigration caseworker,  CAROLINE SMITH for a discussion of her book of poems, The Immigration Handbook.

Inspired by her years as an immigration caseworker to one of the most diverse inner-city areas in the UK, Caroline Smith has written a collection of poems, The Immigration Handbook, that details the many troubling and moving incidents in the lives of those she tries to help. This is a book that reaches out of the headlines into our hearts.

This event is free and open to the public.

Fault Lines in the Constitution: The Framers, Their Fights, and the Flaws That Affect Us Today

Many of the political issues we struggle with today have their roots in the US Constitution.

Husband-and-wife team CYNTHIA and SANFORD LEVINSON join Porter Square Books with their nonfiction book Fault Lines in the Constitution: The Framers, Their Fights, and the Flaws That Affect Us Today.

They take readers back to the creation of this historic document and discuss how contemporary problems were first introduced—then they offer possible solutions. Think Electoral College, gerrymandering, even the Senate. Many of us take these features in our system for granted. But they came about through haggling in an overheated room in 1787, and we’re still experiencing the ramifications.

This event is free and open to the public.