Conversations with Authors - Jane Smiley (Virtual Event)
Saturday, December 12th • 4:00pm PT/7:00pm ET
Jane Smiley
in conversation with David Francis
Conversations with Authors is our free virtual event series! Join us throughout the week at 4:00pm PT/7:00pm ET for a new chat with a different author.
Jane Smiley’s latest novel, Perestroika in Paris, is a captivating, brilliantly imaginative story of three extraordinary animals—and a young boy—whose lives intersect in Paris.
Jane is the author of numerous novels, including A Thousand Acres, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and more recently, the New York Times best-selling Last Hundred Years trilogy: Some Luck, Early Warning, and Golden Age. She is also the author of several works of nonfiction and books for young adults. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she has also received the PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature. Jane lives in Northern California.
David Francis, based in Los Angeles where he works for the Norton Rose Fulbright law firm, spends part of each year back on his family’s farm in Australia. He is the author of The Great Inland Sea, published to acclaim in seven countries, and Stray Dog Winter, Book of the Year in The Advocate, winner of the American Library Association Barbara Gittings Prize for Literature, and a LAMBDA Literary Award Finalist. He has taught creative writing at University of California, Los Angeles, Occidental College, and in the Masters of Professional Writing program at University of Southern California. His short fiction and articles have appeared in publications including Harvard Review, The Sydney Morning Herald, Southern California Review, Best Australian Stories 2012 and 2014, Australian Love Stories, Los Angeles Times, and The Rattling Wall. He is Vice President of PEN Center USA.
Below, please find links to purchase their books.
"Is there anything Jane Smiley cannot do? . . . She turns literary and stylistic cartwheels." --Time
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning and best-selling author, a captivating, brilliantly imaginative story of three extraordinary animals--and a young boy--whose lives intersect in Paris
This powerful twentieth-century reimagining of Shakespeare’s King Lear centers on a wealthy Iowa farmer who decides to divide his farm between his three daughters. When the youngest objects, she is cut out of his will. This sets off a chain of events that brings dark truths to light and explodes long-suppressed emotions.
National Book Award Nominee
A Best Book of the Year: The Washington Post, NPR, USA Today, San Francisco Chronicle, Financial Times, The Seattle Times, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, BookPage
One of the Best Books of the Year: San Francisco Chronicle
It’s 1953, and the Langdons are at a crossroads. Walter, their stalwart patriarch, has died unexpectedly, and his wife must try to keep their farm going. But of their five children, only one will remain to work the land. The others scatter to Washington, DC, California, and everywhere in between.
Winner of the Heartland Prize for Fiction
A Washington Post Notable Book
One of the Best Books of the Year: NPR, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, BookPage
#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK
"A WISE, SPIRITED NOVEL . . . [IN WHICH] SMILEY PLUMBS THE WONDROUSLY
STRANGE WORLD OF HORSE RACING." --People
"ONE OF THE PREMIER NOVELISTS OF HER GENERATION, possessed of a mastery
of craft and an uncompromising vision that grow more powerful with each
In this darkly satirical send-up of academia and the Midwest, we are introduced to Moo University, a distinguished institution devoted to the study of agriculture.
This enthralling epic tale, written in the tradition of the old Norse sagas, takes us to fourteenth-century Greenland—a farflung place of glittering fjords, blasting winds, sun-warmed meadows, and high, dark mountains. This is the story of one family: proud landowner Asgeir Gunnarsson; his daughter Margret, whose willful independence leads her into passionate adultery and
The luminous novella and stories in The Age of Grief explore the vicissitudes of love, friendship, and marriage with all the compassion and insight that have come to be expected from Jane Smiley, the Pulitzer Prize—winning author of A Thousand Acres.
Alice Ellis is a Midwestern refugee living in Manhattan. Still recovering from a painful divorce, she depends on the companionship and camaraderie of tightly knit circle of friends. At the center of this circle is a rock band struggling to navigate New York’s erratic music scene, and an apartment/practice space with approximately fifty key-holders.
In this brilliant novel, Pulitzer Prize-winning and bestselling author Jane Smiley delves into the domestic drama of the Robison family. While seventy-seven-year-old Ike Robison is dying in his bedroom upstairs, his wife defends the citadel of their marriage against an ill-considered, albeit loving, invasion by their three middle-aged daughters and their twenty-three-year-old granddaughter.
A young rider encounters well-known horses and new friends in the final installment of the Ellen & Ned trilogy by Pulitzer Prize winner Jane Smiley.
The first book in a new horse trilogy from Pulitzer Prize winner Jane Smiley starring a feisty young rider.
When eighth grader Abby Lovitt looks out at those pure-gold rolling hills, she knows there’s no place she’d rather be than her family’s ranch—even with all the hard work of tending to nine horses. But some chores are no work at all, like grooming young Jack. At eight months, his rough foal coat has shed out, leaving a smooth, rich silk, like chocolate.
A Pulitzer Prize winner makes her debut for young readers.
Abby Lovitt has been riding horses for as long as she can remember, but Daddy hasn't let her name a single one. He calls all their geldings George and their mares Jewel and warns her not to get attached. The horses are there on the ranch to be sold, plain and simple.
Darcy Bright, a restless young artist, receives a surprising birthday present from his elusive half-sister Fin: a ticket to the Soviet Union housed in a leather money belt. Together only briefly during their youth, Darcy and Fin are both estranged by the distance between them, and yet inextricably bound by the secrets of their childhood.