Marie-Helene Bertino Celebrates the Release of Exit Zero 4/25 @ B&N Philly

We are so excited to welcome into the store on Friday, April 25th at 6pm to celebrate the release of and the paperback edition of ! She will be joined in conversation by author . The conversation will be followed by a signing.

Death-shaped entities—with all of their humor and strangeness— haunt the twelve stories in . Vampires, ghost girls, fathers, blank spaces, day-old peaches, and famous paintings all pierce through their world into ours, reminding us to pay attention! and look alive! and offering many other flashes of wisdom from the oracle and author of Beautyland, Marie-Helene Bertino.

You may pre-purchase your copy of by registering for a Seated Admission w/ Book ticket for $20.51. Your copy will be given to you when you check in for the event at the store and you will be guaranteed a seat at the event.

If you do not wish to pre-purchase your book, you may register for a General Admission - Free ticket. Seating is first come, first served for free ticket holders. If all seats are filled, General Admission ticket holders will be given Standing Room.

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GUIDELINES:

To make this event safe and enjoyable for all attendees, please read the guidelines below before purchasing a ticket so that you know what to expect on the day of the event. To avoid disappointment, we must stress that there will be no access to the event for non-ticketholders.

• Barnes & Noble reserves the right to make new rules and orders in its sole discretion with regard to COVID-19 at any time, and any person not abiding by the Barnes & Noble directives will be refused entrance or directed to leave the premises.

TICKET INFORMATION

Discussion, Q&A and Signing: $20.51(Admission + one copy of) **LIMITED QUANTITY AVAILABLE**: A ticket PER PERSON includes:

• One copy of (published 04/22/2025);

• Admission to the event space and signing line with Marie-Helene Bertino

• SEATED AND STANDING ROOM-ONLY ticket holders will be admitted into the event beginning at 5 PM on the day of the event. Please have a copy of your ticket available either printed out or on your phone for check-in.

For Seated Tickets: A limited quantity is available and will be provided on a first-come, first-served basis. Purchase of a ticket guarantees entrance to the event for the discussion and signing. However, this ticket may not necessarily guarantee a seat at the event, as later arrivals may be placed in a line behind the seated audience.

For Standing Room-Only Tickets: A limited quantity is available and will be provided on a first-come, first-served basis. Purchase of a ticket guarantees entrance to the event for the discussion and signing. Ticket holders will be granted a standing view from behind the seated audience -- some views may be more limited/obstructed than others.

• Please arrive on time according to your ticket in order to sec
• ure your seat in the event space. Late arrivals may only have access to standing room and may not have the opportunity to enter the event space.
• The exact time at which the event ends will be determined on the day. To avoid disappointment, we strongly advise you to arrive on time for the event.

• All event guidelines are subject to change.

• If you have any additional questions, please can call the store directly at: (267) 234-9790.

• Barnes & Noble may cancel this event at any time with or without notice to the ticket holders.

Please note that Eventbrite is the only authorized dealer for this event.

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Marie-Helene Bertino is the author of Beautyland, Parakeet, 2 A.M. at The Cat’s Pajamas, and the story collection Safe as Houses. She was the 2017 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Fellow in Cork, Ireland. She has received the O. Henry Prize, the Pushcart Prize, the Iowa Short Fiction Award, the Mississippi Review Prize, and fellowships from MacDowell, Sewanee, and New York City’s Center for Fiction, and her work has twice been featured on NPR’s Selected Shorts. Her work has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories, PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, and Mississippi Review 30. She is the Ritvo-Slifka Writer-in-Residence at Yale University.

Twelve delightfully strange, haunting stories from the acclaimed, oracular author of Beautyland.

Death-shaped entities—with all of their humor and strangeness— haunt the twelve stories in Exit Zero. Vampires, ghost girls, fathers, blank spaces, day-old peaches, and famous paintings all pierce through their world into ours, reminding us to pay attention! and look alive! and offering many other flashes of wisdom from the oracle and author of Beautyland, Marie-Helene Bertino.

At the moment when Voyager 1 is launched into space carrying its famous golden record, a baby of unusual perception is born to a single mother in Philadelphia. Adina Giorno is tiny and jaundiced, but she reaches for warmth and light. As a child, she recognizes that she is different: She possesses knowledge of a faraway planet. The arrival of a fax machine enables her to contact her extraterrestrial relatives, beings who have sent her to report on the oddities of Earthlings.

For years, as she moves through the world and makes a life for herself among humans, she dispatches transmissions on the terrors and surprising joys of their existence. Then, at a precarious moment, a beloved friend urges Adina to share her messages with the world. Is there a chance she is not alone?

Marie-Helene Bertino’s Beautyland is a novel of startling originality about the fragility and resilience of life on our Earth and in our universe. It is a remarkable evocation of the feeling of being in exile at home, and it introduces a gentle, unforgettable alien for our times.

Piyali Bhattacharya is a fiction and nonfiction writer and professor. Her short stories and essays have appeared in Ploughshares, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere. She is the editor of the anthology Good Girls Marry Doctors: South Asian American Daughters on Obedience and Rebellion, which won the Independent Publisher Book Award and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. She is the Abrams Artist-in-Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, where she has received the Beltran Family Award for Teaching and Mentoring in Creative Writing.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Barnes & Noble - Philadelphia, 1708 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, United States