About this Event
Amanda Uhle, publisher and executive director of McSweeney’s and cofounder of the International Congress of Youth Voices, visits the store for her memoir Destroy This House, a tender, heartbreaking, and hilarious memoir chronicling the challenges of growing up with a desperately scheming father, a mother plagued by an acute hoarding disorder, and parenting parents while seeking independence. She’ll be joined by writer Sara Billups, author of Orphaned Believers and Nervous Systems.
Registration is not required, but helps us anticipate audience size.
The Long family’s love was fierce, their lifestyle bizarre, and their deceptions countless. Once her parents were gone, Amanda Uhle realized she was closer to them than anyone else, yet she found herself utterly confounded by the lives they had led.
Amanda’s striving fashion designer mother and her charismatic wheeler-dealer father wove a complex life together that spanned ten different homes across five states over forty perplexing years. Throughout her childhood, as her mother’s hoarding disorder flourished and her father’s schemes crumbled, contradictions abounded. They bartered for dental surgery and drove their massive Lincoln Town Car to the food bank. When financial ruin struck, they abandoned their repossessed mansion for humble parish housing, and Amanda’s father became a preacher. They swung between being filthy rich and dirt poor, devious and virtuous, lonely and loved, fake and real.
In this “iconic, only-in-America fable of desperate Midwestern dreamers” (Dave Eggers, bestselling author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius), Amanda sets out to document her parents’ unbelievable exploits and her own hard-won escape into independence. With humor and tenderness, Uhle has crafted a heartfelt and utterly unique memoir, capturing the raucousness, pain, joy, and ultimately, the boundless love that exists between all parents and children.
Amanda Uhle is the publisher & executive director of McSweeney's. Her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Politico, The Boston Globe, Newsweek, Oprah Daily and beyond. Her memoir Destroy This House was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing and is an Elle magazine best book of 2025.
Sara Billups is the Seattle-based author of Orphaned Believers (2023) and Nervous Systems (2025). Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Aspen Ideas, and on the BBC. She writes Bitter Scroll on Substack.
Event venue & nearby stays
The Elliott Bay Book Company, 1521 10th Avenue, Seattle, United States
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