Ryan Boudinot and Rebecca Brown — 'Broken Utopia' and 'Obscure Destinies'

Third Place Books welcomes Seattle authors Ryan Boudinot and Rebecca Brown to our Ravenna store for a conversation about their two new books for Publication Studio's Fellow Travelers series. Ryan's Broken Utopia follows a fraudulent novelist and some guy named Max on a quest to reboot reality itself; meanwhile, Brown's Obscure Destinies explores how the living cope with the dying of those they love.

This event is free and open to the public. For important updates, RSVP is highly recommended in advance. This event will include a public signing and time for audience Q&A. Sustain our author series by purchasing a copy of the featured books!

This event is free to attend. Registration is recommended in advance.

Please note: While RSVP helps us anticipate attendance, your RSVP may not guarantee a seat. Seating is first-come, first-served, and all events at our Ravenna neighborhood store are free and open to the public. Only standing room may be available for events with high interest.

We are happy to accommodate any accessibility concerns. Please contact us at [email protected] or call our Ravenna store at (206) 525-2347.

Ryan Boudinot's first new novel since 2012's Blueprints of the Afterlife follows a cast of mystics, frauds, and profoundly incompetent cult leaders through Iceland, Seattle, black holes, and a few blown minds on a quest to reboot reality itself. Lee is one of the most celebrated American novelists of the 1980s, not to mention an obnoxious, womanizing jerk. His body of work happens to have been created by artificial intelligence in the future and delivered to him by some guy named Max. Broken Utopia locates Lee and Max in a cosmos divided into three interdependent layers—the eternal Town, the User Platform and the Substrate—all ruled by Vicarious, a company that converts human experiences into drugs. Residents of the Town enjoy lives on a loop of endless enrichment and wonder, as inhabitants of the User Platform eke out harrowing routines of addiction and delusion. Meanwhile, in the Substrate, a near future earth teeters at the edge of a mass extinction event that—for better or worse—is only temporary. This is the 18th book in the Fellow Travelers Series.

For more than forty years, Rebecca Brown has been writing novels, stories, and essays about how the living cope with the dying of people they love. In her newest book, Brown has gathered four distinct forms—a story, a memoir, a play, and an essay—to bear on four such encounters: a group of gay teens in 1970s Texas, responding to the death of a beloved, and closeted, teacher; old friends in 21st-century Seattle helping a loved one die of cancer; a pair of siblings teaching each other how to live in the wake of a parent’s death; and the lives portrayed in Willa Cather's story collection of the same title, Obscure Destinies.

Like Cather’s collection, Rebecca Brown’s Obscure Destinies focuses on the everyday people whose lives would, if not for our love of them, remain obscure. This is the 17th book in the Fellow Travelers Series.

Ryan Boudinot is the author of five previous books, including the novel Blueprints of the Afterlife and the story collection The Octopus Rises. Boudinot conceived, launched, and led Seattle’s effort to get designated a UNESCO City of Literature. Self-funded, he established the project with the City of Seattle and the US State Department, and met with officials in Paris, Norwich, Edinburgh, Dublin, Reykjavik, and Chengdu to lay the groundwork for the city’s successful bid. As part of this campaign, he also edited the anthology Seattle City of Literature, published by Sasquatch Books in 2015.

Rebecca Brown is the author of fifteen books (novels, short stories, memoirs, essays, prose poems) published in the US and abroad (UK, Japan, Germany, Holland, Norway, etc.). She lives in Seattle with her wife. (Photo credit: Andrea Auge)

Founded in 1998 in Lake Forest Park, Washington, Third Place Books is dedicated to the creation of a community around books and the ideas inside them. With locations in Lake Forest Park and Seattle's Ravenna and Seward Park neighborhoods, Third Place Books is proud to serve the entire Seattle metro area. Learn more about their event series at thirdplacebooks.com/events.

Event Venue

Third Place Books Ravenna, 6504 20th Avenue Northeast, Seattle, United States

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