Book Launch: Hidden River by Sara Lippmann in conversation with A.M. Homes

Thursday May 07, 2026
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm

POWERHOUSE Arena
28 Adams Street (Corner of Adams & Water Street across from the Archway)
Brooklyn , NY 11201

About the Book.

Thirty-five-year-old Cassandra (aka Cass, Cassie, Cassidy, and Cassiopeia) Trout is going nowhere fast. Stuck in her hometown of Philadelphia, she spends her lackluster days working retail, and afterwards it’s run, rinse, repeat. But a surprise wedding invitation from an estranged childhood friend is set to change all that.

Sally Sellers has made it big in London and is eager to flesh out her guest list. Cass and Sally were once inseparable, sharing everything from boys to beds. But secrets polluted their friendship—particularly Cass’s illicit entanglement with Sally’s father, Len, which began when she was an adolescent, and only ended with his untimely death. Will the wedding finally force Cass to reckon with her painful, hidden past? Can she heal well enough to truly grow up and embrace her uncertain adulthood? And what does healing look like when the most damaging memories are also the most meaningful?

Sara Lippmann’s Hidden River is an unforgettable masterwork by a writer at the top of her game. With a timeline that toggles between the summer of 2008 and the late 80s/early 90s, this lean but bold novel casts an intimate look at grooming in the era before #metoo. A fascinating blend of tragedy and dark comedy, a
work of brutal emotional truths unearthed with lightness and grace, this exquisitely charged story, at once private and political, will linger in your mind—and earn a place in your heart.

About the Author.

Sara Lippmann is the author of the novels Lech and Hidden River and the story collections Doll Palace and Jerks. Her fiction has won the Lilith Fiction Prize and has been honored by the New York Foundation for the Arts, and her essays have appeared in The Millions, The Washington Post, Lit Hub, and elsewhere. With Seth Rogoff, she co-edited the anthology Smashing the Tablets: Radical Retellings of the Hebrew Bible from SUNY Press. She is a co-founder of Writing Co-lab, an artist run online teaching cooperative, and the editor-in-chief of Epiphany magazine. She lives in Brooklyn.

About the Moderator.

A.M. Homes most recent book is The Unfolding. Her previous work includes, This Book Will Save Your Life, which won the 2013 Orange/Women’s Prize for Fiction, Music For Torching, The End of Alice, In a Country of Mothers, and Jack, as well as the short-story collections, Days of Awe, Things You Should Know and The Safety of Objects. She was a Co-Executive Producer and Writer on David E. Kelly and Stephen King’s, Mr. Mercedes, Co-Executive Producer and Writer on Falling Water, has created original television pilots for HBO, FX and CBS and was a writer/producer of the Showtime series The L Word. She has been the recipient of numerous awards including Fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, NYFA, and The Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at The New York Public Library. In addition, she has been active on as Co-Chair of the Board of Directors of Yaddo, and on the board of The Fine Arts Work Center In Provincetown, The Writers Room, and PEN-where she chaired both the membership committee and the Writers Fund. A.M. Homes was born in Washington D.C., lives in New York City and teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Princeton.