Offsite: Lauren Groff: Brawler w/ MJ Franklin

Mon Apr 20 2026 at 07:00 pm to 08:00 pm UTC-04:00

St. Ann & the Holy Trinity Church | Brooklyn

Books Are Magic
Publisher/HostBooks Are Magic
Offsite: Lauren Groff: Brawler w\/ MJ Franklin
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“Lauren Groff is required reading: Her newest stories prove she’s among the best in the game.” —Los Angeles Times
About this Event

Event guidelines:

  • Additional copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event.
  • The conversation will be livestreamed for free online here: https://youtube.com/live/5Y391aORqNs
  • A signing line will follow the talk.
  • Home address is collected for contact tracing purposes; it will not be used otherwise.
  • 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].


A stunning, fierce collection from a master of the short story and one of the most important writers of our time.

Read alone, each story in Lauren Groff’s electric collection is an individual triumph, bold, agile, and packed with power. Read together, they hum in exhilarating resonance. Ranging from the 1950s to the present day and moving across age, class, and region -- from New England to Florida to California -- these nine stories reflect and expand upon a shared theme: the ceaseless battle between humans’ dark and light angels.

“In every human there is both an animal and a god wrestling unto death,“ one character tells us. Among those we see caught in this match are a young woman suddenly responsible for her disabled sibling, a hot-tempered high school swimmer in need of an adult, a mother blinded by the loss of her family, and a banking scion endowed with a different kind of inheritance. Motivated by love, impeded by the double edges of other peoples’ good intentions, they try to do the right thing for as long as they can.

Precise, surprising, and provocative, anchored by profound insight into human nature, Brawler reveals the repeated, sometimes heartbreaking turning points between love and fear, compassion and violence, reason and instinct, altruism and what it takes to survive.


Lauren Groff is a three-time National Book Award finalist and the New York Times bestselling author of five novels, including Fates and Furies, Matrix, and The Vaster Wilds, and two other story collections, including Florida. Winner of The Story Prize and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, she has also been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her work regularly appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and elsewhere, and her books have been translated into thirty-six languages. She lives in Gainesville, Florida, where she and her husband own the independent bookstore The Lynx.


MJ Franklin is an editor at The New York Times Book Review, and the host of the Book Review Book Club. Before joining The Times, he worked at Mashable as an assistant editor and host of the MashReads podcast.

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Event Venue & Nearby Stays

St. Ann & the Holy Trinity Church, 157 Montague Street, Brooklyn, United States

Tickets

USD 10.89 to USD 37.02

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