"This is a very funny, excoriatingly honest story of being young, semi-idealistic, stupid, and in love. If you have ever been any of these things, you'll devour it."
—Dave Eggers

Join Deb Olin Unferth and Believer editor and co-founder Heidi Julavits for an evening of eating, reading, rum, and reminiscing as the two discuss Unferth's new memoir, Revolution: The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War.

About the book:

For Deb Olin Unferth, 1987 went like this: "My boyfriend and I went to join the revolution. We couldn't find the first revolution. The second revolution hired us on and then let us go. We went to the other revolutions in the area–there were several–but every one we came to let us hang around for a few weeks and then made us leave. We ran out of money and at last we came home. I was eighteen. That's the whole story."

But luckily for us, that's not the whole story at all. The whole story of Revolution is one of love and naiveté, courage and war, sandals and the youthful search for meaning.

Converting from secular Judaism to Christianity Unferth follows her boyfriend George as he drops out of college and hops a bus south of the border. Despite their earnest commitment to a myriad of revolutionary causes and to each other, the couple find themselves unwanted, unhelpful, and unprepared as they bop around Central America in 1987, looking for "revolution jobs." As the months wear on, cracks begin to form: they get fired, they get sick, they run out of money, they grow disillusioned with the revolution and each other. But years later, the trip remains fixed in Unferth's mind and she finally goes back to Nicaragua to try to make sense of it all.

About the participants:

Deb Olin Unferth is the author of the story collection Minor Robberies and the novel Vacation, winner of the 2009 Cabell First Novelist Award and a New York Times Book Review Critics' Choice. Her work has been featured in Harper's Magazine, McSweeney's, The Believer, and the Boston Review. She has received two Pushcart Prizes and a 2009 Creative Capital grant for Innovative Literature. She teaches at Wesleyan University and currently lives in New York.

Heidi Julavits is an editor at The Believer, and the author of the novels The Uses of Enchantment, The Effect of Living Backwards, and The Mineral Palace. She's been published in The Best Creative Nonfiction Vol. 2, Esquire, Story, Zoetrope All-Story, and McSweeney's. She currently divides her time between Maine and Manhattan with her husband, Ben Marcus, and their children.

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