About this Event
For this event, Lauren will be joined in conversation by author Karol Lagodzki.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
From the award-winning author of The Wonder Garden comes a set of linked stories spotlighting human-animal relations—and revealing the tensions that threaten to fracture a suburban New England community
Tensions simmer in small-town Connecticut. A city transplant is haunted by the deer carcass hanging in her neighbor’s garage. A psychiatric patient believes she’s becoming a bird. A disgraced oil executive invites his granddaughter’s kindergarten class to tour his home menagerie—what could go wrong? Rumors spread and fires burn in this second short story collection from award-winning author Lauren Acampora.
As in Acampora’s debut The Wonder Garden, The Animal Room delves deep into the town of Old Cranbury and its eclectic mix of residents. Incisive and moving, these stories chart the interconnected lives of neighbors, relatives, coworkers, enemies, lovers, and the animals around them, turning an unflinching eye to the natural world to shed light on human nature. Through its riveting ensemble, The Animal Room paints a kaleidoscopic portrait of contemporary American life that is strikingly unique.
ABOUT LAUREN ACAMPORA:
Lauren Acampora is the author of The Animal Room, published in June by Grove Atlantic, as well as three other books of fiction: The Wonder Garden, The Paper Wasp, and The Hundred Waters. Her work has won or been nominated for the GLCA New Writers Award, the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, the Story Prize, and the New England Book Award, and she’s been named an Artist Fellow in Fiction by The New York Foundation for the Arts. Lauren’s writing has also appeared in publications such as The Paris Review, One Story, and The New York Times and has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories 2025. She lives with her family in Westchester County, New York.
ABOUT KAROL LAGODZKI:
Karol Lagodzki is an exophonic, English-language author of fiction. His stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Invisible City, Storm Cellar, Asimov’s and elsewhere, and he has won Panel Magazine’s Ruritania Prize. His first full-length book, Controlled Conversations, was a finalist for the 2025 PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel. Karol lives halfway down a Southern Indiana ravine with his wonderful family, a scurry of squirrels, a passel of possums, a gaze of raccoons, a descent of woodpeckers, and a large dog.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Morgenstern Books & Café, 849 South Auto Mall Road, Bloomington, United States
USD 0.00
