• One-hour event (40 mins conversation between me and Laurie Frankel, 15 mins Q&A)
• ASL interpretation and transcription…
• On Zoom: attend from anywhere!
• Free (or you can pay what you like or buy the book)…
• Starts at 4pm Pacific/7 pm Eastern.
• Register to get the Zoom link here.

Laurie is a Seattle writer and friend. We have—well, okay, had—lunch regularly to talk about our work, books, life, the universe and everything. Since the pandemic we’ve had a few Zoom happy hours—but this will be our first event together. I’m looking forward to it.

Laurie is smart, warm, and generous in person—and all that as a writer, too, along with a particular gift for characters who feel simultaneously real, specific, and unexpected. (If you haven’t yet read This Is How It Always Is, about the family of a trans child, you should.) Her latest novel is One, Two, Three, a tale of ecology and environment, capitalism and greed, disability and adversity and triumph. But it’s good triumph: real and earned triumph. There are no miracle cures, no suicides, no pity and no inspiration porn. There’s a lot of delight in this novel, yes, but, again, it is always earned.

Laurie does something very interesting in this book, something that very few people have been able to figure out: she norms the Other in terms of disability. Here’s the blurb I gave the book:

One Two Three is a powerful and nuanced novel about hope, human frailty, and love. Laurie Frankel takes a clear-eyed look at the mess we make of the world when we privilege profits over people and, brilliantly, without flinching from the truth, allows no hint of contempt, disgust, or hatred to enter the conversation. Three sisters, Mab, Monday, and Mirabel, understand that you can’t fight old problems with traditional tools. Their gifts and differences and love for each other help them to understand that their mother―and by extension our mothers—can’t make the change the world needs. It’s up to the daughters to act, to move us forward, to tell a different story. It is the daughters who will save us. One Two Three is the blueprint for a true revolution.

We’ll talk about the book a lot, of course, because always the point of these things, but along the way we’ll cover writing process in general, highs and lows in particular, norming the Other, why girl superheroes are nothing like boy superheroes—and how that relates to my notion of Real Heroes (my terms for the dreaded ‘heroine’), and almost anything else you might want to know. There’ll be at least 15 mins Q&A: just type your question in the chat box as we talk and get an answer from either or both of us. It’s like magic. And did I say it’s free? And you can join from anywhere i the world?

See you on Friday. Bring your questions!