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Join local authors Adam Shaw and Nick O'Neill for the release of Shaw's latest collection, COZY. Both authors will be reading from their books and discussing the creative process. About Nick O'Neill's FLYOVER STATE:
Farm animals gone rogue, early morning road rage, and a reminder that nothing good ever happens after 9:00 PM in a local wing joint. Bittersweet memories from a time we all remember, junior high triumph, furnishing a first home, a global pandemic. Through humor and thought-provoking wit, Nick O'Neill shares stories of living life in Indiana through the lens of your favorite wordsmith next door in his debut anthology.
About Adam Shaw's COZY:
Blending curious, reflective vignettes with confessional personal essays, Cozy traverses both the years following Adam’s parents’ deaths (settling their estates, reconciling with his estranged half- sister, raising his daughter) and also his childhood (growing up with an addicted parent, grappling with traditional views of masculinity, navigating sibling rivalries) to paint a portrait of the discomfort that arose from the relief and sadness, loneliness and interconnectedness, pride and guilt he experienced after those who brought him into this world were no longer part of it. It's about dive bars and old cassettes, last meals and new tattoos, family-as- strangers and interruptions at funerals, and the minutiae we collect and cherish and let go of as we sit in and learn to live with our traumas and pasts.
ADVANCED PRAISE FOR COZY:
In Cozy, his collection of short, surgical essays set among the dive bars, video stores, and locker rooms of Lafayette, Indiana, Adam Shaw offers a searing account of caring for and mourning his dementia-stricken father, a Vietnam veteran. Exploring loss, family, and the complicated inheritance passed from parents to children, Shaw also wrestles with masculinity, memory, and alcoholism. Few writers are as adept at indelibly capturing how grief settles into a room's corners—how we cozy up to it when we've lived with grief long enough for it to become as familiar as a worn recliner, a favorite barstool, or any other place we can sink into—the way Shaw does here. Packed with moments of incandescent grace and raw beauty, Cozy is a collection that you will want to make room for."
–John Waddy Bullion, author of This World Will Never Run Out of Strangers
“In Cozy, Adam Shaw builds a complex yet loving portrait of his father, anchored by burgers and breakfast specials, Diet Cokes and Buds. Shaw’s masterful memoir work is on full display in these essays as he dissects masculinity and responsibility with a layered tenderness that feels like a magic trick. Cozy hits in much the same way a good Diet Coke does: a reach toward comfort and a buzz to dull any pain, all existing in that overlap between sweetness and ache. This book reminds us that the only real way to ease the bruise of grief is to tell stories.
–Emily Costa, author of Girl on Girl
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Event venue
Thieme & Wagner Brewery, 652 Main St, Lafayette, IN 47901-1451, United States
Tickets
Concerts, fests, parties, meetups — all the happenings, one place.