The Center for Fiction Presents Valeria Luiselli on Beginning Middle End

Tuesday, 7:00 pm EDT July 28, 2026

The Center for Fiction
& Livestreamed

Cover_BEGINNING MIDDLE END

Don’t miss acclaimed author Valeria Luiselli (Lost Children Archive, The Story of My Teeth) when she visits The Center to launch her new book, Beginning Middle End, a warm and poetic novel set on the island of Sicily during a summer of wild winds, volcanic rumbles, and unexpected tempests.

Luiselli’s latest opens with a mother and her teen daughter traveling together in the wake of a divorce and the dissolution of their traditional family structure. At the heart of Beginning Middle End are questions like, “In the beginning, in creation myths, why are the earth and sky always torn asunder? And what does torn asunder really mean?” These musings also serve as the starting point for Luiselli’s inimitable “fictional lecture.” Drawing from myths and stories, but also the world around us, Luiselli guides us through the exquisitely tender language of both the natural world and stories we tell about it, inviting us to think deeply about the relationship between time, transformation, and the creative process.

Join Luiselli as she gives a masterclass lecture on storytelling, memory, and the ways writing allows us to record the erosion of time. Accompanied by a series of Polaroid photographs and field recordings, this unique event offers a rare glimpse into the ideas that shape a writer’s work. A book signing will follow.

This event is brought to you in part with generous support from the Borchard Foundation Center on Literary Arts.

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. Please note that tickets do not include books; we encourage you to order in advance online or purchase copies at the event.

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Featuring

  • Valeria Luiselli (c) Clayton Cubitt

    Valeria Luiselli

    Valeria Luiselli

    Valeria Luiselli is an acclaimed writer of both fiction and nonfiction. She is the author of the essay collection Sidewalks; the novels Faces in the Crowd and The Story of My Teeth; and, most recently, Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions and the international bestseller Lost Children Archive. She is the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius Grant,” and the winner of two Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, an American Book Award, the Folio Prize, and the 2021 International Dublin Literary Award. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages. She lives in New York City.


    Photo Credit: Clayton Cubitt

Featured Book

  1. . 
    Cover_BEGINNING MIDDLE END

    Beginning Middle End

    By Valeria Luiselli

    Published by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

    PURCHASE

    Valeria Luiselli’s novel opens the morning a mother and her teenage daughter arrive in Sicily, during a summer of rapidly-changing winds, volcanic rumbles, and sudden tempests. They’ve landed near the ancient ruins where the narrator’s grandmother worked long ago on an archaeological dig. How do you begin again, the mother wonders, pondering her family line, and what if the new beginning you’re imagining is actually the end?

    While the mother tries to figure out how to reconstruct their lives together—cooking meals side by side, reading out loud to each other, playing chess, bickering and making-up—her deeply intelligent, inquisitive daughter begins to take the reins of the story. She becomes increasingly curious about her great-grandmother’s past as a digger in archaeological sites and ancient tombs, and urges her mother to leave their enclosed day-to-day in search for answers about their family’s past and future.

    Beginning Middle End evolves into a road novel of exquisite tenderness. In their drive through Sicily, mother and daughter cross paths with the island’s migrants, storekeepers, and elders, but also its volcanoes, its winds and its waters. As their trip progresses, it becomes a journey to origins—not just to the familial past across continents, languages, and generations, but also further back to a mythical and geological past. With her own mother showing signs of dementia, the narrator confronts the primary questions of life: Where is home? Where do we dwell and seek safety? How are a family’s memories made and what happens when they disappear?

    Warm, funny, and poetic, this novel is an ode to imagination and possibility in dark times.

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