We're excited to welcome Rima Brusi for a book launch and celebration of her new book, Phantoms.About this Event
Date: January 14th, 2026
Time: 6:00 PM – 7:00 PM
Location: Bright Side Bookshop, 18 N. San Francisco St.
We're excited to welcome Rima Brusi and for a book launch and celebration of her new book, Phantoms. The event will begin at 6:00 PM with a reading, followed by a Q&A and book signing at 7:00 PM.
We often sell out of event books, so pre-order ahead of time to guarantee your copy and your opportunity to have it signed by the author after the event!
This event is free and open to the public! RSVP is encouraged but not required!
About the Book: Phantoms begins with a literal phantom: an olfactory hallucination that Rima follows for years while she writes an intimate memoir of motherhood, memory and mind. The book traces four generations of women: a great-grandmother with a cigar, a flask of rum and a deck of cards; a grandmother of formidable intellect and early death; another, strict and secretive, who raises the author; and, most present and least understood, the strange and estranged mother--luminous, wounding, timid, playful--who becomes an obsession. Real-life scenes unfold through time: a village scandal, untreated mental illness, a rock festival, an acid trip, a Santería initiation. Rima's motherhood, writing and language are inseparable from her lineage, her island and the diaspora that pulled her away. The result is a narrative archaeology of the self that binds the spectral and the material, with a voice that moves between memory and inquiry, grief and humor, rendered with lyrical precision. The English translation by Jessica Powell preserves voice, meaning and cadence, and includes two new chapters written by the author.
About the Author: RIMA BRUSI is a Puerto Rican writer, anthropologist and scholar whose work moves between creative nonfiction, ethnography and applied research. Her book Fantasmas (Editorial Emergente, 2019) is the winner of the PEN Puerto Rico National Prize in biography and memory. She lives in Flagstaff, Arizona.
Event venue
Bright Side Bookshop, 18 North San Francisco Street, Flagstaff, United States
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