Offsite: Gabrielle Hamilton: Next of Kin w/ Susan Burton

Event guidelines:

• All attendees are strongly encouraged to wear a face mask at all times.
• Tickets are limited to restrict capacity.
• 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 on YouTube: https://youtube.com/live/ZuHVC4RRAvI
• 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].

An electrifying memoir about the demise of a singular family—a stunning new book by Gabrielle Hamilton, author of the New York Times bestseller and James Beard Award-winner Blood, Bones & Butter.

The youngest of five children, Gabrielle Hamilton took pride in her unsentimental, idiosyncratic family. She idolized her parents’ charisma and non-conformity. She worshipped her siblings’ mischievousness and flair. Hers was a family with no fondness for the humdrum.

Hamilton grew up to find enormous success, first as a chef and then as the author of award-winning, bestselling books. But her family ties frayed in ways both seismic and mundane until eventually she was estranged from them all. In the wake of one brother’s sudden death and another’s suicide, while raising young children of her own, Hamilton was compelled to examine the sprawling, complicated root system underlying her losses. She began investigating her family's devout independence and individualism with a nearly forensic rigor, soon discovering a sobering warning in their long-held self-satisfaction. By the time she was called to care for her declining mother–the mother she’d seen only twice in thirty years–Hamilton had realized a certain freedom, one made possible only through a careful psychological autopsy of her family.

Hamilton’s gift for pungent dialogue, propulsive storytelling, intense honesty, and raucous humor made her first book a classic of modern memoir. In Next of Kin, she offers a keen and compassionate portrait of the people she grew up with and the prevailing but soon-to-falter ethos of the era that produced them. A personal account of one family’s disintegration, Next of Kin is also a universal story of the emotional clarity that comes from scrutinizing our family mythologies and seeing through to the other side.

Gabrielle Hamilton is the author of the New York Times bestseller Blood, Bones & Butter, which won the James Beard Foundation’s award for Writing and Literature, and the cookbook Prune. She is the chef/owner of Prune restaurant in New York City’s East Village. Hamilton received an MFA in fiction writing from the University of Michigan and contributed to the monthly “Eat” column for The New York Times magazine for five years. Her work has also appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, GQ, Bon Appétit, Vogue, The Wall Street Journal, Elle, and House Beautiful.

Susan Burton is the host of the Peabody Award–winning podcast "The Retrievals" from Serial Productions and the New York Times. She is also the author of the memoir "Empty," which tells the story of the eating disorders she kept secret for decades. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, New York Magazine, and others. For years she was a producer at This American Life, and she began her career as an editor at Harper's.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

First Unitarian Congregational Society in Brooklyn, 119 Pierrepont Street, Brooklyn, United States