Rough Draft is excited to welcome author Adrienne Brodeur along with local author and editor Halimah Marcus to celebrate the publication of Adrienne's new book, Little Monsters.
This event is free with food, drink, or book purchase. Seating is first-come, first-served, but RSVP's via Eventbrite are appreciated. (They help us stay in touch in case of changes, and they give us an idea of how many people to expect.)
Come for the reading and discussion; stay for the book signing and meet-and-greet to follow. Copies of Little Monsters will be available for purchased on event night, and can be ordered online at roughdraftny.com/preorder .
ABOUT THE BOOK:
Ken and Abby Gardner lost their mother when they were small and they have been haunted by her absence ever since. Their father, Adam, a brilliant oceanographer, raised them mostly on his own in his remote home on Cape Cod, where the attachment between Ken and Abby deepened into something complicated—and as adults their relationship is strained. Now, years later, the siblings’ lives are still deeply entwined. Ken is a successful businessman with political ambitions and a picture-perfect family and Abby is a talented visual artist who depends on her brother’s goodwill, in part because he owns the studio where she lives and works.
As the novel opens, Adam is approaching his seventieth birthday, staring down his mortality and fading relevance. He has always managed his bipolar disorder with medication, but he’s determined to make one last scientific breakthrough and so he has secretly stopped taking his pills, which he knows will infuriate his children. Meanwhile, Abby and Ken are both harboring secrets of their own, and there is a new person on the periphery of the family—Steph, who doesn’t make her connection known. As Adam grows more attuned to the frequencies of the deep sea and less so to the people around him, Ken and Abby each plan the elaborate gifts they will present to their father on his birthday, jostling for primacy in this small family unit.
Set in the fraught summer of 2016, and drawing on the biblical tale of Cain and Abel, Little Monsters is an absorbing, sharply observed family story by a writer who knows Cape Cod inside and out—its Edenic lushness and its snakes.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Adrienne Brodeur is the author of the memoir, Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover and Me, which was described by The New York Times Book Review as: “Exquisite and harrowing. . . . The book is so gorgeously written and deeply insightful, and with a line of narrative tension that never slacks, from the first page to the last, that it’s one you’ll likely read in a single, delicious sitting.” Published in October 2019 by HMH Books, Wild Game’s film rights were bought by Chernin Entertainment with Nick Hornby attached to adapt and Deniz Gamze Ergüven, the director of Mustang, attached to direct.
Halimah Marcus is the Executive Director of Electric Literature, a nonprofit digital publisher, and the editor of its weekly fiction magazine, Recommended Reading. She is also the editor of Horse Girls (Harper Perennial, 2021), an anthology that reclaims and recasts the horse girl stereotype, which was a New York Times “New and Noteworthy” pick. Her short stories have appeared in Indiana Review, Gulf Coast, One Story, BOMB, The Literary Review and elsewhere. Halimah has an MFA from Brooklyn College, and lives in Kingston, New York.
COVID PROTOCOLS:
Rough Draft is no longer requiring masks or social distancing indoors. Event attendees are encouraged to monitor the CDC's guidance based on current community risk level in Ulster County, and to decide what precautions to take and what level of risk is appropriate for them.