Nora Lange in conversation with Lamorna Ash - Islington

Join us with Nora Lange, in conversation with Lamorna Ash, to discuss Nora's debut novel Us Fools - a tragicomic, award-winning novel of two precocious sisters coming of age during the midwest farm crisis in 1980s America - and her short fiction collection Day Care - stories of lust, estrangement, and self-preservation which are at once hilarious and savage.
US FOOLS
Joanne and Bernadette Fareown are raised on their family farm in rural Illinois, keenly affected by their parents’ volatile relationship and mounting financial debt, haunted by the cursed history of the women in their family. Largely left to their own devices, the sisters educate themselves on Greek mythology, feminism, and Virginia Woolf, realising they must find unique ways to cope in these antagonistic conditions, questioning the American Dream as the rest of the country abandons their community in crisis.
DAY CARE
"Nora Lange follows up her dazzling debut novel Us Fools with Day Care, an electric short story collection that transforms the grotesqueries of modern life into comedy. Ranging from strange to surreal to simply laugh-out-loud funny, Lange’s stories offer a savage takedown on the lies we tell ourselves to get through the day. From two snow globe figurines coming to terms with the fact that they will never go anywhere to one of the most deliciously disastrous dinner parties ever put to paper, Day Care is the latest reminder that Nora Lange is an author to keep your eye on for years to come."— Michael Welch, Chicago Review of Books
Nora Lange's debut novel Us Fools was awarded The Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction, named a best book of 2024 by The Boston Globe and NPR, a Los Angeles Times bestseller, and a New York Times Editors’ Choice pick. Her writing has appeared in The Believer, BOMB, Hazlitt, and elsewhere. Lange’s ‘Hot Spot’, featured in The New Yorker’s July 2025 summer flash fiction series.
Lamorna Ash is a writer and freelance journalist based in London. Her first book, Dark, Salt, Clear: Life in a Cornish Fishing Town, was a radio 4 book of the Week, won a Somerset Maugham Award and was shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize. Her latest book, Don't Forget We're Here Forever, was a Waterstones Book of the Month for April 2026.

Event Venue

Waterstones, 11 Islington Green, London, United Kingdom

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