About this Event
On Saturday, November 15 at 5pm, join Melissa Fraterrigo for a reading and conversation with Sarah Layden!
Melissa will read from her new memoir, The Perils of Girlhood, and then have a brief discussion with fellow author Sarah Layden.
The discussion and Q&A will cover the personal and emotional toll of being female in our culture, how pop culture objectified girls and women in the 80s and 90s, and the hard conversations all of us need to have as we guide our children into the future.
Proceeds from sales at Indy Reads support the nearly 500 adult students in our English literacy classes.
About Melissa Fraterrigo
Melissa Fraterrigo’s memoir, The Perils of Girlhood, was published by the University of Nebraska Press in Fall 2025. She is also the author of the novel Glory Days (University of Nebraska Press), which was named one of “The Best Fiction Books of 2017” by the Chicago Review of Books as well as the short story collection The Longest Pregnancy (Livingston Press). Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies from storySouth and Shenandoah to Notre Dame Review, Sou’wester and The Millions. She teaches creative writing at Purdue University, in the Butler University MFA in Creative Writing program, and is also the founder and executive director of the Lafayette Writers’ Studio in Lafayette, Indiana, where she offers classes on the art and craft of writing. She lives with her husband and two daughters in West Lafayette, Indiana.
About The Perils of Girlhood
Like many girls growing up in the eighties and nineties, Melissa Fraterrigo leaned on popular culture to transition from childhood to adolescence and beyond. Judy Blume told stories about girls embracing their imperfections; Madonna encouraged bold moves. But Fraterrigo’s experiences with dating and attempts to refashion her body through diet and exercise left her feeling far from empowered. It wasn’t until Fraterrigo became a mother to twin daughters and they began their own self-criticisms that she questioned how she might help them navigate their own girlhoods.
A handsome swim coach’s advances, an anxious daughter soothing her father’s temper, the history of Mace, and the joy of female friendship: these are some of the memories that shape Fraterrigo’s worldview as an adult. Written with lyricism and insight, The Perils of Girlhood provides a reckoning and a reclamation. And while these personal narratives developed from Fraterrigo’s desire to guide her daughters, their universal truths compel us to consider how best to bring all of our daughters into the future.
About Sarah Layden
Sarah Layden is the author of Imagine Your Life Like This (University of Wisconsin Press, 2023), The Story I Tell Myself About Myself, winner of the 2017 Sonder Press Chapbook Competition, and Trip Through Your Wires (Engine Books, 2015), a novel. She is co-author with Bryan Furuness of The Invisible Art of Literary Editing (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023.) Her short fiction can be found in Boston Review, Stone Canoe, Blackbird, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, the anthologies Best Microfiction 2020, Welcome to the Neighborhood, and Sudden Flash Youth, and elsewhere. Her recent nonfiction work has appeared in The Washington Post, Newsweek, Poets & Writers, Salon, River Teeth, The Millions, and Identity Theory. She is an associate professor of English at Indiana University Indianapolis.
About Imagine Your Life Like This
The characters who inhabit Sarah Layden's short story collection are on the verge of change—if only they could see themselves and their situations with greater clarity. Caught in the midst of crises, they stumble toward the future without fully understanding their past. Layden’s deft, spare prose sketches worlds and lives with telling details, juggling disparate strands of identity and often revealing the deeper truths in unexpected moments of epiphany.
A bride-to-be puts on her detective hat when her groom goes missing. A woman returns to college after escaping an abusive marriage, only to discover her professor is a fraud. Reunited at a high school reunion, two former classmates completely misinterpret a critical incident from a decade prior. These and other characters find themselves lonely and in limbo, their self-identity as blurry as the old photographs they cling to with stubborn intensity.
Set mostly in the Midwest and upstate New York, Imagine Your Life Like This captures everyday Americans in all their discontent, misunderstandings, and dogged determination for a better world.
This event is Pay-What-You-Can. Here’s what your suggested donation can do for the Indy Reads community:
FREE – This ticket is for attendees that would like to attend this event and are unable to purchase a ticket. Indy Reads values our community and facilitators. We are proud to provide programming to all. Thank you for being a part of our community!
$10 – This donation covers the cost of one attendee to this event. Indy Reads strives to bring the very best programming to Fountain Square and all Hoosiers. Thank you for helping us to keep our quality programs accessible for all!
$20 – This donation covers the cost of two attendees to this event. If you are attending as an individual, your ticket at this level makes it possible for another who cannot afford a ticket to attend. It is only through the generosity of our community that we are able to support programs that enrich the lives of all Hoosiers. Thank you for your support!
Other – “Pay-What-You-Can” really does mean pay what you can. Indy Reads appreciates that every one of our community members is able to support our vision of 100% literacy for all in different ways. Whether you can pay $5 or $50, we are so excited to see you – and thank you for your support!
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Indy Reads, 1066 Virginia Avenue, Indianapolis, United States
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