The Center for Fiction Presents Genre-Defying Authors Patrick Cottrell and Jordy Rosenberg in Conversation with Andrea Lawlor

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Wednesday, 7:00 pm EDT April 22, 2026

The Center for Fiction
& Livestreamed

Join us for an evening with Patrick Cottrell and Jordy Rosenberg, two of contemporary literature’s most daring, genre-defying voices, as they discuss their brilliantly unconventional new novels Afternoon Hours of a Hermit and Night Night Fawn with Andrea Lawlor, the author of Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl.

Cottrell’s latest book follows Dan Moran, a Korean adoptee, trans writer, and reluctant teacher, five years after the events of Sorry to Disrupt the Peace. When a mysterious envelope arrives containing a childhood photo of his deceased brother, Dan returns home against his better judgment. What unfolds is an existential noir infused with absurd humor: mistaken identities, detective fantasies, unsettling encounters, and an aching search to understand the gulf between who we are and how we’re seen. Cottrell, a Whiting Award winner, delivers a profound, restless inquiry into identity, memory, and the strange alchemy of making fiction.

In Night Night Fawn, Rosenberg (author of Confessions of the Fox, a 2018 finalist for The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize), presents a deathbed confession like no other. Terminally ill and high on opioids in her cramped Manhattan apartment, protagonist Barbara Rosenberg chronicles her life with ferocious, unfiltered candor. There’s her smut-loving late husband, her failed stabs at stardom, her unhinged theories on gender and politics, and the two great heartbreaks she cannot outrun: her estranged trans son and a lost friend whose betrayal still burns. Blurring memoir and fiction, diatribe and manifesto, the novel is a darkly funny portrait of intergenerational conflict and the messy, impossible work of love.

Don’t miss this stirring conversation about family, identity, finding the humor in despair, and the radical possibilities of form-breaking fiction. A book signing will follow the event.

We offer two in-person ticket options: the $10 Standard Ticket and the $40+ Supporter Ticket. Both provide the same access, but if you’re able, we kindly suggest registering for the Supporter Ticket to help sustain our programs.

Featuring

Patrick Cottrell

Patrick Cottrell

Patrick Cottrell is the author of Sorry to Disrupt the Peace and Afternoon Hours of a Hermit (April 2026). He is the winner of a Whiting Award in fiction in 2018 and a Barnes & Noble Discover Award in 2017. Cottrell is currently an assistant professor at the University of Denver.

Photo Credit: Sarah Gerard
Jordy Rosenberg

Jordy Rosenberg

Jordy Rosenberg is the author of the novel Confessions of the Fox, a New York Times Editors Choice selection, shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, a Lambda Literary Award, a Publishing Triangle Award, the UK Historical Writers Association Debut Crown Award, longlisted for The Dublin Literary Award, and named one of the best books of the year by the New Yorker, Kirkus Reviews and others. Jordy’s work has been supported by MacDowell, The Lannan Foundation, The Banff Centre, and The Ahmanson-Getty Foundation. He is a professor in the Department of English and Associated MFA Faculty in the Program for Poets and Writers at UMass-Amherst.

Photo Credit: Beowulf Sheehan
Andrea Lawlor

Andrea Lawlor

Andrea Lawlor is the author of a chapbook, Position Papers (Factory Hollow Press, 2016), and a novel, Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl (Rescue Press, 2017; Vintage, 2019; Picador UK, 2019). Their stories, essays, and poems have appeared in publications such as Ploughshares, The Brooklyn Rail, jubilat, and the New York Times. They are the recipient of a Whiting Award for Fiction, as well as fellowships from Lambda Literary, Radar Labs, the Ucross Foundation, and Macdowell Colony. They are an Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at Mount Holyoke College, and live in Western Massachusetts.

Photo Credit: Joanna Chattman

Featured Books

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Afternoon Hours of a Hermit

By Patrick Cottrell

Published by HarperCollins

PURCHASE

Five years after the death of his youngest brother, Dan Moran is now the published trans author of the autofictional novel Sorry to Disrupt the Peace. He is teaching fiction in Brooklyn and working on his next book–a psychological thriller–when a mysterious envelope arrives for him in the mail. Addressed to the wrong name, it includes a childhood photo of his deceased brother. But who would send such a thing, and why?

Against his better judgment, Dan returns to his childhood home on the eve of his brother’s memorial dinner. His estranged family is surprised to see him, but he ignores them. He drives around in his brother’s Honda Accord, believing he is a detective. He searches for a constellation of unidentified women who may have been involved with his brother, all while being mistaken for another man. He hopes his investigation will reveal exactly who he was to his brother, but in a series of unsettling and destabilizing encounters, what he discovers is the irrevocable distance between who we are and how we are perceived.

Afternoon Hours of a Hermit is Patrick Cottrell’s long-awaited second novel—an existential noir, an absurd comedy, a complex character study, and a heartbreaking inquiry into the paradox of identity, memory, and the very enterprise of writing fiction.
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Night Night Fawn

By Jordy Rosenberg

Published by One World

PURCHASE

In a cluttered rent-controlled apartment in the middle of Manhattan, Barbara Rosenberg is terminally ill, high on opioids, and writing the story of her life. She has opinions about her smutty late husband, her career as the receptionist for a disreputable plastic surgeon, her glory days as an accomplished jazzerciser, and her failed aspirations to be a film noir actress. But what she really wants to talk about are unhinged thoughts on gender, Karl Marx, Zionism, and her two great disappointing loves: an estranged trans son and a long-lost best friend whose betrayal haunts Barbara still. As she descends further into delirium and illness, Barbara finds herself in a nightmare from which she cannot escape, and her circumstances put her on a crash course with these intimates—or are they avenging nemeses?—once again.

Part novel, part someone’s mother’s unauthorized memoir—all diatribe, gutter schtick, and deranged manifesto, Night Night Fawn is a ferociously candid account of intergenerational conflict.

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