Reading Groups

Two Lies and a Truth: Reading Between the Lines of Fact and Fiction with Sullivan Summer

3 Sessions Mondays, 6:00 pm EDT - 7:30 pm EDT April 21 to June 23, 2025

Online via Zoom

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The ‘With Books’ option includes the titles required for this group at an additional 10% discount from our Bookstore.

Meeting Dates:
4/21, 5/19, 6/23
Online via Zoom

Mark Twain once said, “Fact is stranger than fiction, but that is because Fiction is obligated to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.” But what happens when fiction announces itself as rooted in fact? Inside what possibilities does it deposit the reader?

In this group, we will read three books situating themselves on the fact-fiction continuum of a single event: Emma Cline’s The Girls (2016), a novel focusing on a group of teenage girls devoted to an aspiring musician; Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2021), which follows a fictional action movie star and his friend; and Helter Skelter (1974) by Vincent Bugliosi, the best-selling true crime book of all time.

What to read in advance of the first meeting: The Girls by Emma Cline

What to expect from this reading group: A lively, participant-led discussion of the factual worlds the authors created inside their novels, against the backdrop of the world the collective “we” created outside of it. The instructor will provide factual and other background where relevant.

Reading List:

The Girls by Emma Cline
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood by Quentin Tarantino
Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi

Capacity: 20

Please note: All virtual classes are recorded. Please click here for information about our recording policy.

Led by

Sullivan Summer

Sullivan Summer

Sullivan Summer is a former attorney and corporate executive who now devotes her time to all things literary. Supporters of the Adoptees On podcast can hear Sullivan interview authors such as Rebecca Carroll, Nicole Chung, Jenny Heijun Wills, and others on the art and craft of writing across genres. She has presented scholarship on Black poetics at Jackson State University, published in several literary journals, and is a past participant of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Tin House Workshop, Yale Writers’ Workshop, and Cave Canem. Her chapbook, Performance Anxiety, is forthcoming in Spring 2025 from Black Sunflowers Poetry Press, and she is currently seeking agency representation for her first novel, collapsing the genres of nonfiction history and speculative fiction.

About this series

Reading Groups

Whether you’re looking to catch up on great novels or you’re interested in exploring a new writer or literary period, our reading groups offer high-level literary discussion led by experts in the field.

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