Wednesday, 7:00 pm EDT September 9, 2026
The Center for Fiction
& Livestreamed
Join the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival and The Center for Fiction for a keynote conversation with Booker Prize-winning novelist Marlon James, celebrating the launch of his new novel, The Disappearers. He will be joined by renowned memoirist and poet Mary Karr, author of The Liars’ Club.
Set in Kingston, Jamaica, during the 1980s through 1990s, The Disappearers follows eight strangers rehearsing for a play. Each man has a different reason for being involved in the performance, but all of them are gay—and contend with the dangers that such a truth presents. After a savage mob attack on the group in which one of the men is murdered, the survivors attempt to process the violence, rage, and desire for retribution that colors their lives.
Woven through multiple perspectives, The Disappearers is a riveting and deeply human story about the compromises some men make to survive. Don’t miss James and Karr in conversation about this unflinching tale of resistance and the enduring beauty of queer community. In-person tickets include a guaranteed seat and a signed copy of The Disappearers. After the event, James will sign books.
Co-presented with the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival.
Pricing inclusive of sales tax if applicable.
Featuring
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Marlon James
Marlon James
Marlon James is the Booker Prize–winning and New York Times bestselling author of A Brief History of Seven Killings; the bestselling and National Book Award finalist Black Leopard, Red Wolf; as well as the bestselling Moon Witch, Spider King; The Book of Night Women; and John Crow’s Devil. In addition to the Booker Prize, James’s novels have won the American Book Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, and the Los Angeles Times Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, and have been finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the NAACP Image Award. In 2019, Time magazine named him one of the one hundred most influential people in the world. Born in Jamaica, James lives in New York City.
Photo Credit: Mark Seliger
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Mary Karr
Mary Karr
Mary Karr is an award-winning poet, New York Times best-selling memoirist, and the Jesse Truesdell Peck Professor of Literature at Syracuse University. She is the author of the critically acclaimed, bestselling memoirs The Liars’ Club, Cherry, Lit, as well as The Art of Memoir, and five poetry collections, most recently The Tropic of Squalor. Mary is also a songwriter, having collaborated with Rodney Crowell, Norah Jones, Lucinda Williams and others on a country album called Kin. You can find her on Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints, a docudrama series on Fox Nation exploring the lives, sacrifices, and humanity of various Catholic saints. Mary’s many awards include PEN (The Martha Albrand Award for nonfiction), the Texas Institute for Letters, The Whiting Writer’s Award, Best American Poetry, Pushcart Prizes for both poetry and essays, and fellowships from NEA, Radcliffe Bunting Fellowship, and Guggenheim.
Photo Credit: Joe McNally
Featured Book
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The Disappearers
By Marlon James
Published by Penguin Publishing Group
In 1988, eight men in Kingston, Jamaica, begin rehearsals for a play. The men are strangers to one another and each has a different reason for being involved. But they all share one inescapable truth: All of them are gay―a “battyman” in Jamaican argot―and all of them must contend with the dangers that such a truth lays bare.
One night a mob savagely attacks them, killing one of the men. For the survivors, their recovery is as much emotional as it is physical. As their bodies heal, each man grapples with the violence, the hatred, and the rage that the attack made plain. Some try to ignore what the attack has unearthed, while others double down on retribution.
In The Disappearers, Marlon James has written a riveting and deeply human story of men forced to make compromises to survive what the society they live in demands. It is both a dramatic page-turner and an unflinching exploration of queer life in Jamaica during the 1980s and 1990s.
