Wednesday May 24, 2023
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
POWERHOUSE Arena
28 Adams Street (Corner of Adams & Water Street across from the Archway)
Brooklyn , NY
11201
This event will be IN-PERSON – masks recommended. RSVP here!
About the Book.
In an opulent honeymoon suite in Watch Hill, Rhode Island’s most desirable wedding venue, 29-year-old Callie Holt is spending her wedding night lying in a bathtub shoveling down a pizza; her expensive white dress now splattered with sauce and her groom passed out in the next room. With her seven-hour-old marriage already imploded, Callie turns to the place of record – her phone – sifting through the photographic evidence of the past year to pinpoint where it all went wrong.
Could it have started when Callie moved in with her best friend, Virginia Murphy, in the swanky Upper East Side pied-à-terre for which Virginia’s parents foot the bill? Or when Virginia’s irritatingly attractive cousin (and Callie’s secret ex) Ollie returned from pursuing his photography career abroad, throwing a wrench in Callie’s relationship with her kind (if a bit dim) finance bro boyfriend, Whit? Or was the true turning point when Callie stumbled upon a dark secret lurking in the Murphys’ well-heeled past, one with the potential to upend everything Callie knows about the people she considers her second family?
Over the course of one wedding-filled year, all these long-simmering secrets and resentments will come bubbling to the surface, leading to a reckoning that will strip Callie and everyone around her down to their most gruesomely real, filter-free selves. As Callie attends wedding after wedding, getting tagged in post after post, she begins to contemplate—and actualize through her own art—the gulf between the true selves of the people around her and the selves they present on their screens.
About the Author.
Avery Carpenter Forrey is a writer and editor whose work has appeared in The Cut, GQ, and elsewhere. As Managing Editor at theSkimm, she cowrote the #1 New York Times bestseller How to Skimm Your Life. She holds an MFA in fiction from NYU and lives in Connecticut with her husband and daughter. Social Engagement is her first novel.
About the Moderator.
Caitlin Barasch is the author of A Novel Obsession, which was a Good Morning America Buzz Pick and one of Buzzfeed’s Best Books of 2022. Born and raised in New York, Caitlin earned her BA from Colorado College and her MFA from New York University. Her writing has appeared in over a dozen publications, and been nominated for Best Small Fictions. A former bookseller, Caitlin is currently a creative writing instructor at The Writers Circle.