Author event! Susan Keselenko Coll with Pamela Redmond

We're hosting Susan Keselenko Coll as she celebrates the launch of REAL LIFE AND OTHER FICTIONS. Susan will be joined in conversation by Pamela Redmond!

About :

Cassie Klein has always used stories to help her fly, but now her plot points aren’t lining up.

In her 50s, Cassie has already weathered more than most. She was orphaned at the age of two and has never fully understood why her DC-based parents were on a bridge in West Virginia that just so happened to collapse as they drove across it. Her search for answers prompted a failed career in journalism, and now she’s an aspiring novelist teaching at a local community college waiting for her literary dreams to finally come true. She stood by her once-doting husband when his meteorology career took a nosedive, and now she has learned that the man who became an internet meme has been cheating on her.

She’s had enough. She scoops up a teething puppy and embarks on a road trip that’s heavy on impulse and light on planning. She’s not sure where she’s going, but she knows she might as well start at the beginning. What really happened to her parents all those years ago?

In this comically surreal, warmhearted journey, she encounters people she never knew existed—chief among them, an enigmatic cryptozoologist, who helps her in the quest to discover her past. And along the way, she looks for answers regarding curious sightings of a creature known as the Mothman in the months before her parents died. As the line between real life and fiction blurs, Cassie finds herself grappling with the nature of stories, myths, and who gets to write the endings.

About the authors:

Real Life and Other Fictions is Susan Coll’s seventh novel. Her previous books include Bookish People; The Stager, a New York Times and Chicago Tribune Editor’s Choice; and Acceptance, which was made into a television movie starring Joan Cusack. Her work has appeared in publications including the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post, Washingtonian Magazine, Moment Magazine, NPR.org, and Atlantic.com. She is the president of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation and is the events advisor at Politics and Prose Bookstore, where she has worked for seven years. Newsday has called Coll the “Queen of Literary Comedy.”

Pamela Redmond is the New York Times bestselling author of more than 20 books of fiction and nonfiction, including Younger, the basis for the hit TV show, and the forthcoming novel The Matriarch, out from Zibby Books in August. She’s also the creator of Nameberry, the world’s largest website devoted to names, and a former editor and columnist for Glamour. She lives in Los Angeles.

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