About this Event
Event guidelines:
- Each ticket will include either a copy of the featured book or a $10 Books Are Magic gift card.
- Additional copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event.
- A signing will follow the talk.
- Home address is collected for contact tracing purposes; it will not be used otherwise.
- The event will also be livestreamed for free here: https://youtube.com/live/HgPrwlcOmAM
- As a reminder: If you are not feeling well, please do not come to the event, even if you have a ticket; email us and we'll work it out.
If you have any questions regarding these guidelines or to request accessibility accommodations, please contact [email protected].
Seductive, unsettling, and impossible to put down, This Vital Absence is a novel about inheritance that transforms into an uneasy reckoning with the stories we tell to survive.
Sylvia is the daughter of two loving mothers, but she has always wanted to know her father. When she moves back to New York City, a dossier arrives from her moms, with a new lead: Dean, an anesthesiologist who may bear some responsibility in the death of a pop star. At the same time, Sylvia meets Molly, a woman with her own family mysteries, with whom she makes a deal: they will help each other in the search for each other’s biological families. These three are drawn into a series of narrative games, games that leave Sylvia and Molly reeling and faced with a choice about the kinds of stories in which they are willing to participate.
With the propulsive prose and psychological intensity of Patricia Highsmith, Veltfort probes questions of inheritance and intimacy, the allure of obsession, and misunderstandings that shape our lives.
Sophia Veltfort's fiction has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Writer’s Digest online (first place, Annual Writing Competition), the Santa Monica Review, Narrative online (30 Below Contest finalist), the Chicago Tribune online (Nelson Algren finalist), Alaska Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. Her nonfiction has appeared in Harvard Review and been selected as a Notable Essay in the Best American Essays. After graduating from Yale, she studied on a Marshall Scholarship at Oxford and the University of East Anglia, then completed a Joint MFA / PhD at Cornell. She grew up in New York City with her two moms, three cats, and four avocado plants, and she currently teaches creative writing at Yale.
Lily Akerman's poetry has appeared in The Stinging Fly and the anthologies Short Flights and Short Circuits (Schaffner), among other places. Her work for theater includes The Commons (59E59), The Stalls (Cork Opera House), Hedgehog Years (Playing On Air), and Dreamcatchr (Dublin International Film Festival). Her libretti have twice been nominated for Best Opera by the Irish Times. She was a Fulbright Awardee and a recent Playwriting Fellow at Juilliard.
Event venue & nearby stays
Books Are Magic Montague, 122 Montague Street, Brooklyn, United States
Concerts, fests, parties, meetups — all the happenings, one place.