Tuesday Aug 12, 2025
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.
Luster meets The Idiot in this riveting debut novel about a volatile friendship between two outsiders who escape their bleak childhoods and enter the glamorous early ’90s art world in New York City, where only one of them can make it.
Ruth, an only child of recent immigrants to New England, lives in an emotionally cold home and attends the local Catholic girl’s school on a scholarship. Maria, a beautiful orphan whose Panamanian mother dies by suicide and is taken care of by an ill, unloving aunt, is one of the only other students attending the school on a scholarship. Ruth is drawn forcefully into Maria’s orbit, and they fall into an easy, yet intense, friendship. Her devotion to her charming and bright new friend opens up her previously sheltered world.
While Maria, charismatic and aware of her ability to influence others, eases into her full self, embracing her sexuality and her desire to be an artist, Ruth is mostly content to follow her around: to college and then into the early-nineties art world of New York City. There, ambition and competition threaten to rupture their friendship, while strong and unspoken forces pull them together over the years. Whereas Maria finds early success in New York City as an artist, Ruth stumbles along the fringes of the art world, pulled toward a quieter life of work and marriage. As their lives converge and diverge, they meet in one final and fateful confrontation.
Ruth and Maria’s decades-long friendship interrogates the nature of intimacy, desire, class and time. What does it mean to be an artist and to be true to oneself? What does it mean to give up on an obsession? Marking the arrival of a sensational new literary talent, Lonely Crowds challenges us to reckon honestly with our own ambitions and the lives we hope to lead.
About the Author.
Stephanie Wambugu is the author of the novel Lonely Crowds. She lives in New York.
About the Panelists.
Zain Khalid, named a “5 Under 35” honoree by the National Book Foundation in 2024, is the author of the debut novel Brother Alive. Brother Alive won the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize for best first book in any genre. Khalid is also the recipient of the 2024 Bard Fiction Prize.
His writing has appeared in The Paris Review, The New Yorker, n+1, Bookforum, and elsewhere. He is an associate editor at The Drift and a contributing editor at Bidoun.
Zoe Dubno is a writer from New York. She has written for the New York Times, New York Review of Books, The Nation, Vogue, The Guardian, and elsewhere. Her first novel, Happiness and Love will be published by Scribner in September.
Christian Lorentzen writes for London Review of Books, Harper’s Magazine, Granta, and Bookforum.