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A Conversation with Jennifer Egan, Jaimy Gordon and Karen Russell

Presented by Free Library of Philadelphia - Parkway Central Library at Free Library of Philadelphia - Parkway Central Library

October 27, 2011

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According to the New York Times Book Review, Jennifer Egan writes with “an admirably deft touch, but more impressive than her craftsmanship is the emotional authenticity she achieves.” Winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for her novel A Visit from the Goon Squad, Egan is the author of novels The Keep, National Book Award finalist Look at Me, The Invisible Circus, and the short story collection Emerald City. In A Visit from the Goon Squad, Egan explores the human desire for immortality, escape, and redemption through music as she weaves the stories of an aging punk rocker and the young woman he employs.

Winner of the 2010 National Book Award, Jaimy Gordon’s Lord of Misrule examines the rough-and-tumble world of cheap horseracing through the eyes of five flawed characters trying to make a living in rural West Virginia. The New York Times’ Janet Maslin calls the novel, “assured, exotic, and uncategorizable, [with] flashes of startling beauty.” Gordon’s previous novels include Bogeywoman, a Los Angeles Times Best Book, and She Drove Without Stopping, an American Library Association Notable Book.

Centered on a run-down amusement park in the Florida Everglades and chronicling one family’s struggle to stay afloat in a sinking world, Karen Russell’s debut novel Swamplandia! is “lavishly imagined and spectacularly crafted,” according to Booklist. Russell has been featured in The New Yorker’s debut fiction issue and on the magazine’s 20 Under 40 list, and she was chosen as one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists. Russell is also the author of acclaimed short story collection St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves.