BookPeople Presents: Ashley Whitaker - Bitter Texas Honey

Please welcome Ashley Whitaker and S. Kirk Walsh to celebrate Bitter Texas Honey!

This event is free and open to the public.

• Start time: 7:00 P.M.
• Run time: 45-60 minutes, followed by a signing line.
• Location: The second floor of BookPeople.

The author will be signing and personalizing copies of the book after the speaking portion of the event.

• To get a book signed, a copy of the event book or an item of equal value must be purchased from BookPeople.

Guidelines:

• Seating will be on a first-come, first-served basis.

• If you have any other questions, please visit our Eventbrite FAQ. If your question isn't covered in the FAQ, feel free to email us at [email protected].
• All event guidelines are subject to change.
• BookPeople reserves the right to cancel or postpone this event if necessary.
• There will not be a live stream or recording available.

About the book:

The Royal Tenenbaums meets Fleabag in this hilarious and dizzyingly smart debut about an over-the-top evangelical Texan family—and the daughter at its center racing to finish her very important novel before her ex-boyfriend finishes his.

It’s 2011, and twenty-three-year-old Joan West is not like the rest of her liberal peers in Austin, nor is she quite like her Tea Party Republican, God-loving family. Sure, she listens to conservative talk radio on her way to and from her internship at the Capitol. But she was once an America-hating leftist who kissed girls at parties, refused to shave, and had plenty of emotionless sex with jazz school friends—that is until a drug-induced mania forced her to return to her senses.

But above all Joan is a writer, an artist, or at least she desperately wants to be. Always in search of inspiration for her novel, she catalogs every detail of her relationships with men—including with her former muse slash current arch nemesis Roberto—and mines her very dysfunctional family for material. But when her beloved, credit card debt–racked cousin Wyatt finds himself in crisis, Joan’s worldview is cracked open and everything comes crashing down.

Funny, whip-smart, and tender, Bitter Texas Honey introduces us to the unforgettable and indefatigable Joan West: ambitious, full of contradictions, utterly herself. As she wades through it all—addiction, politics, loss, and, notably, her father’s string of increasingly bizarre girlfriends—we witness her confront what it means to be a person, and an artist, in the world.

About the author:

Ashley Whitaker is a writer from Texas. She received an MFA from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan. Her work has appeared in Tin House and StoryQuarterly, and has received support from the Ragdale Foundation. She lives in Austin with her family.

About the moderator:

S. Kirk Walsh is the author of the national bestseller The Elephant of Belfast. She writes for the New York Times Book Review, Texas Highways, and elsewhere. For the past ten years, she has taught a nine-month fiction workshop for advanced writers in Austin. Walsh is also the founder of Austin Bat Cave, a nonprofit that provides free writing workshops for students in the greater Austin area. Currently, she is at work on a second novel about Detroit.

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Thank you for supporting Ashley Whitaker, S. Kirk Walsh, and your local independent bookstore!

Event Venue

BookPeople, 603 North Lamar Boulevard, Austin, United States