February Third Thursday: “The Ties That Bind Us: Writing Complicated Relationships”
February 20, 2025 7:00 PM - 8:30 PM CST
Free
- This event has passed.
This Event is for Members only.
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For our February Third Thursday, we’ll be back in-person at BookPeople. If you’re in the Austin area, we hope you’ll join us on February 20.
Whether it be blood, love, or circumstance that binds us, we are interconnected beings with lives hopelessly intertwined. Perhaps this is why there’s no richer source for plot or tension in a piece of writing than relationships. Books that explore and mine these complications rather than reduce them are the ones that stay with us long after we’ve reached THE END and are the ones we can’t help but discuss at length with our own circle of connections.
How does a writer delve into such a topic and stay true to the nuances and complexities of our real relationships? We’ll be joined by three authors — Jennifer Chang (An Authentic Life), Alina Grabowski (Women and Children First), and Erin Quinn-Kong (Hate Follow) — whose recent books do just that. Join us to hear about how they’ve explored and rendered complex relationships on the page.
This conversation will be moderated by WLT Program Director Sarah Renee Beach. Come out and say hello to your friendly WLT staff, meet other writers, and soak up the awesomeness that is our literary community.
No need to RSVP for this in-person event (you can just show up), but if you’d like us to send you a reminder in the days leading up, register above and we’ll be sure to!
And if you’re not in the area, don’t worry! We’ll be livestreaming on our WLT YouTube Channel.
Buy our panelists books and support indie bookstores! You can find our February Third Thursday booklist here.
CONTINUING YOUR WRITING JOURNEY
Featured Presenter(s)
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Jennifer Chang is the author of The History of Anonymity, Some Say the Lark, and An Authentic Life, which was recently longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her work has been honored with fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, and the Elizabeth Murray Artists Residency and with the William Carlos Williams Award, a Pushcart Prize, and the Levinson Prize from Poetry magazine. She teaches at the University of Texas in Austin and is the poetry editor of New England Review. -
Alina Grabowski grew up in coastal Massachusetts and holds degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Vanderbilt University. Her debut novel, Women and Children First, was published in 2024. She lives in Austin, Texas. -
Erin Quinn-Kong is a longtime magazine editor and a brand new author. Currently managing editor at Texas Highways, she was also editor-in-chief of Austin Monthly and an editor at Allure and Us Weekly. Erin is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism and lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband and their two children. Hate Follow is her debut novel.
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