The Center for Fiction Presents: A.M. Homes on The Unfolding with Kurt Andersen

Tuesday, 7:00 pm EDT September 6, 2022

The Center for Fiction
& Livestreamed

In-person tickets include a $10 bookstore voucher, redeemable toward the featured event book on the night of the event. All registrants will receive a link to livestream the event.

In a time of tremendous political upheaval and divisiveness, voices such as A.M. Homes have never been more critical. The author of thirteen books—in addition to work in TV and film—Homes’s writing is subversive, timely, and exacting. The Center for Fiction is thrilled to welcome her to our stage in celebration of her new novel The Unfolding, which tells the alternative history of the time after the 2008 US Presidential election. Tackling division in both family and in government, Homes considers power in every shape and form.

Join A.M. Homes in conversation with author and political correspondent Kurt Andersen for an exciting discussion of our political moment and how we can use storytelling to survive it.

In Conversation

A.M. Homes

A.M. Homes

A.M. Homes is the author of thirteen books, among them the bestselling memoir The Mistress’s Daughter; the novels This Book Will Save Your Life, The End of Alice, and Jack; and the short story collections Days of Awe, The Safety of Objects, and Things You Should Know. She also writes for film and television and teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Princeton University.

Photo Credit: Marion Ettlinger
Kurt Andersen

Kurt Andersen

Kurt Andersen is a writer. He’s the author of several critically acclaimed novels, including True Believers (2012), Heyday (2007), and Turn of the Century (1999). His latest book is Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History (2020), like its prize-winning companion volume Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire (2017) a New York Times bestseller. In addition, Andersen makes audio documentaries, most recently Nixon At War (2021), having co-created and for 20 years hosted Studio 360, the Peabody Award-winning public radio program about arts and culture. He also writes for television, contributes to the Atlantic and the New York Times, and appears regularly as a commentator on MSNBC. Previously he served as editor-in-chief of New York, co-founded Spy magazine, and was a prize-winning columnist and critic for Time and the New Yorker.

Featured Book

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The Unfolding

By A.M. Homes

Published by Viking

PURCHASE

The Unfolding opens on the Election Night of 2008, at the doomed McCain party in Arizona. Homes introduces the Big Guy, a wealthy McCain donor who feels unmoored by Obama’s victory and the inevitable new era in American history he will usher in. Terrified of his increasing irrelevance, the Big Guy taps a group of like-minded men to reclaim their version of the American Dream. But as he builds a scheme to disrupt the country, the Big Guy also faces turbulence at home. His wife, Charlotte, hits a breaking point after years of playing the silent wife and tries to imagine a future for herself; and after voting for the first time, his teenage daughter Meghan begins to question everything her father taught her.

In a story that is as much about the dynamics within a family as it is about the desire for those in power to remain in power, Homes presciently unpacks a dangerous rift in American identity, prompting a reconsideration of the definition of truth, freedom, and democracy.