The Center for Fiction Presents Melissa Broder on Death Valley with Karah Preiss

Wednesday, 7:00 pm EDT October 4, 2023

Livestreamed with In-Person
Watch Party

This event will now be held virtually with a Watch Party at The Center for Fiction. The Ticket/Voucher option includes a $10 Bookstore voucher, redeemable toward the featured event book on the night of the event. Book purchases will include a signed bookplate and a Death Valley sticker pack on the night of the event.

Join us at The Center for Fiction for a livestreamed conversation about Death Valley, the newest release from author Melissa Broder (Milk Fed, The Pisces). Broder brings her dark, existential humor to this thrillingly imaginative tale about a woman who has fled California—and her sorrows—for the desert. She enters into a mysterious opening in a large cactus while on a hike and embarks on an equally hilarious and poignant journey of self-reflection. Broder is joined by Karah Preiss, co-founder of Belletrist, for a conversation about the intersections of grief and humor, and utilizing imaginative, impossible elements to unlock human truth.

Presented in partnership with the Jewish Book Council.

In Conversation

Melissa Broder

Melissa Broder

Melissa Broder is the author of the novels Milk Fed and The Pisces, the essay collection So Sad Today, and five poetry collections, including Superdoom. She has written for the New York Times, Elle.com, and New York magazine’s the Cut. She lives in Los Angeles.

Photo Credit: Ryan Pfluger
Karah Preiss

Karah Preiss

Karah Preiss is a creative producer living in New York City. She cofounded Belletrist book club with actress Emma Roberts, along with Belletrist Productions, a TV and film production company.

Featured Book

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Death Valley

By Melissa Broder

Published by Scribner / Simon & Schuster

PURCHASE

In Melissa Broder’s astounding new novel, a woman arrives alone at a Best Western seeking respite from an emptiness that plagues her. She has fled to the California high desert to escape a cloud of sorrow—for both her father in the ICU and a husband whose illness is worsening. What the motel provides, however, is not peace but a path, thanks to a receptionist who recommends a nearby hike.

Out on the sun-scorched trail, the woman encounters a towering cactus whose size and shape mean it should not exist in California. Yet the cactus is there, with a gash through its side that beckons like a familiar door. So she enters it. What awaits her inside this mystical succulent sets her on a journey at once desolate and rich, hilarious and poignant.

This is Melissa Broder at her most imaginative, most universal, and finest. This is Death Valley.