An Evening with Amanda Uhle

Event Structure (all times subject to change):

6pm - VIP Reception

7pm - Main Event

8pm - Q&A / Book Signing

Join us for a night filled with unforgettable storytelling and conversation as we host the Amanda Uhle and discuss her hotly anticipated debut memoir Destroy This House at Lourdes University's beautiful Franciscan Center. Amanda will share insights into her process and what challenges she faced in piecing her memories together into what would become a published memoir and how it changed her. This in-person event is a rare opportunity to engage with the author whose new book has been called "confessional, vulnerable, honest, and scintillating," and "a fantastically entertaining tale of the most endearing grifters ever committed to print - who happen to be the author's parents!"

Signed book included with ticket. Author presentation + Q & A will be followed by a book signing. Additional copies available for purchase at the event.

VIP Reception begins at 6pm and is a mix-and-mingle format, with an opportunity to meet the author beforehand. A signed copy of the book and light refreshments are included.

This event is coordinated through a community partnership by Lourdes University, Starlite Theater Group, Finch & Fern Book Co., and Red Bird Sylvania. These events, which build community and cultivate connectivity and understanding through storytelling and celebration of the written word, would not be possible without the generosity of Taylor Automotive Family. Your participation helps support local arts and cultural programming. Thank you!

Bio

Amanda Uhle writes about culture, politics, and civil rights for The Washington Post, Politico Magazine, The Boston Globe, and Newsweek. Uhle is coeditor of the I, Witness series of first-person stories by youth activists, former director of the 826michigan youth writing and tutoring program, and cofounder, with Dave Eggers, of the International Congress of Youth Voices. Their work with youth writing organizations worldwide is documented in Unnecessarily Beautiful Spaces for Young Minds on Fire. Uhle is the publisher and executive director of McSweeney’s, an independent nonprofit publisher of distinctive books and magazines.

About Destroy This House

For fans of The Glass Castle and The Liars’ Club, 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.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 Destroy This House, 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.

Raves and Reviews

“With riveting precision, candor, and wit, Uhle mixes emotionally complex memories with research into her parents’ audacious schemes in a staggering feat of exorcism and reconciliation, a testament to loyalty, compassion, and love.”—Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)“Refreshing. The author shares at least one quality with her parents: she can spin a good yarn.”—Publishers Weekly“An affecting portrait of a definitively dysfunctional family….Uhle’s book will hit home with many readers.”—Kirkus Reviews“A heartfelt memoir of a complicated but loving relationship.”—Library Journal“What do you get when parents’ pursuit of happiness collides with a child’s need for stability? Astounding anecdotes, expired canned goods and hard-won insights on loyalty and love.”—Sarah Vowell, Lafayette in the Somewhat United States“The American Dream turns pathological in Amanda Uhle's beautiful memoir, Destroy This House, as Uhle reckons with her parents' snarled identities and confounding lifestyles. Poignant, wryly funny, and exquisitely written, Uhle masterfully depicts the confluence of ambition and greed, pioneerism and narcissism, love and pain. I devoured every sentence.”—Erika Krouse, author of Tell Me Everything: The Story of a Private Investigation“Destined to become a classic in the daughter-memoir genre, Destroy This House offers a tour of one couple's decaying, overdrawn world and the effect it had on their child, a devoted good-girl who did her best to help even as doing so began to compromise her own sanity. The author—a Gen-Xer whose indomitable spirit will be as familiar to readers as her cassette mixtapes—artfully excavates both her n'er-do-well parents' decaying home and her own furious compassion.”—Ada Calhoun, New York Times bestselling author of Also a Poet“An iconic, only-in-America fable of desperate Midwestern dreamers.”—Dave Eggers, author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

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Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Franciscan Center of Lourdes University, 6832 Convent Boulevard, Sylvania, United States