Named one of America’s greatest storytellers by the Washington Post, Jonathan Lethem is the New York Times bestselling author of 11 novels, including The Fortress of Solitude and Motherless Brooklyn, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. He co-edited the anthology The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick and the recently published Library of America anthology Shake It Up: Great American Writing on Rock and Pop from Elvis to Jay Z.
His latest novel, The Feral Detective, is his first detective novel since Motherless Brooklyn. Reviewers say it delivers the same memorable delights: ecstatic wordplay, deeply felt characters, and a wonderfully offbeat sense of humor.
In her book Bizarro Worlds, Chicago author Stacie Williams interrogates her own experience of gentrification and racism through the lens of Lethem’s superhero narrative, articulated in The Fortress of Solitude. For Jonathan Lethem's characters, and for Williams in her own life, gentrification is a stand-in for racism—the "Big Bad" that affects education, policing, and housing policy.
Williams is the Director for the Center for Digital Scholarship at the University of Chicago. Her work has appeared in Bitch, Midnight Breakfast, LitHub, New York magazine, Catapult, Gordon Square Review and The Rumpus.
Join us at the American Writers Museum for a conversation between these two authors. Books will be sold before and after the event.
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