BookPeople Presents: Erin Quinn-Kong - Hate Follow

Please welcome Erin Quinn-Kong and Alex Kiester to celebrate Hate Follow!

This event is free and open to the public.

• Start time: 7:00 P.M.
• Run time: 45-60 minutes, followed by a signing line.
• Location: The second floor of BookPeople.

The author will be signing and personalizing copies of the book after the speaking portion of the event.

• To get a book signed, a copy of the event book or an item of equal value must be purchased from BookPeople.

Guidelines:

• Seating will be on a first-come, first-served basis.

• If you have any other questions, please visit our Eventbrite FAQ. If your question isn't covered in the FAQ, feel free to email us at [email protected].
• All event guidelines are subject to change.
• BookPeople reserves the right to cancel or postpone this event if necessary.
• There will not be a live stream or recording available.

About the book:

To her one million Instagram followers, influencer Whitney Golden’s life looks just about perfect. But her curated existence explodes when her teenage daughter Mia sues her for invasion of privacy. The monumental case throws their relationship into a tailspin and has mother and daughter grappling with what it truly means to be in the public eye.

Influencer Whitney Golden has it all: beautiful, photogenic children; a handsome new boyfriend; a gorgeous house; and designer clothes and beauty products that arrive on her doorstep every day. After spending years building her brand as a widowed mother of four (including twins!) to over a million followers, the thirty-seven-year-old is at the peak of her career.

But it all comes to a screeching halt when Mia, her teenaged daughter, announces she’s tired of the social media life. She wants nothing more to do with her mother’s online brand—and demands that not just she, but her siblings and their deceased father be removed from Whitney’s Instagram, blog, and just about everywhere else on the internet.

When Whitney doesn’t agree, Mia does the unthinkable: She sues her mother. What started as a family spat turns into a monumental case about child privacy, individual agency, and modern parenting that shatters Mia and Whitney’s relationship and wreaks havoc on both their lives. As the case ignites a media firestorm and unrelenting online bashing from a Greek chorus of internet snarkers, Whitney has to decide whether she’s willing to risk everything she’s built to win back her daughter.

About the author:

Erin Quinn-Kong is a longtime magazine editor. Currently managing editor of Texas Highways, she has also been an editor at Austin Monthly, Us Weekly, and Allure. She is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism and lives in Austin, TX, with her husband and their two children. Hate Follow is her debut novel.

About the moderator:

While she always dreamed of becoming a novelist, Alex wasn't exactly sure how to get there. She graduated from Rhodes College in Memphis, TN with a degree in creative writing along with a few hundred dollars cash from bartending and promptly moved back into her childhood room in her hometown of Austin, TX. Her first job was as a technical writer for a distressed properties institute, which to this day, Alex still has no idea what that means. She eventually got a copy editing job at the journal for the Texas House of Representatives, which was exciting for the first few months and then terribly mundane.
From there, she became a book editor at a boutique romance publishing house, which, yes, is a euphemism for erotica (sorry, Dad). As Alex worked on book after book that she had not authored, she increasingly felt that she could work on one that she had. During her lunch breaks, she began writing her own romance novel, which, no, is not a euphemism for erotica (you’re welcome, Dad). While it was pretty bad, by writing a novel, she’d proven to herself that she could. And now she had the bug.
Over the next few years, she worked a slew of jobs to bankroll her novel-writing habit, from Zumba instructor to casting assistant and eventually, writing coach. And then, after years of writing and multiple manuscripts on the shelf, she finally got the phone call she’d been waiting for: Audible wanted to publish her book. Her debut, In Her Skin, came out as an Audible Original in October 2019 and Alex worked furiously to follow it up with another. Her next, The Truth About Ben and June, came out in June 2022. She also co-wrote the #1 New York Times bestseller, All Good People Here, which came out in July 2022.

Alex lives with her husband in Austin, TX, and when she’s not writing, she can be found reading in the bath, talking on the phone with her mom, taking long walks, watching too much TV, or getting distracted by the squirrels beyond the window at her writing desk. She continues to feel things very deeply and she’ll continue to write these feelings down for a very long time to come.

By purchasing a book from BookPeople, you are not only supporting a local, independent business – you’re showing publishers that they should continue sending authors to BookPeople.

Thank you for supporting Erin Quinn-Kong, Alex Kiester, and your local independent bookstore!

Host or Publisher BookPeople