Debut Fiction Book Launch with Muriel Leung

Join us at Village Well Books & Coffee for the launch of Muriel Leung's debut novel How to Fall in Love in a Time of Unnameable Disaster!

This exciting event will feature a reading from the "absurd and profound" novel (Kirkus), a conversation with Hugo finalist Ryka Aoki, a Q&A session, and a signing from the author.

About the book:

Acid rainstorms have transformed New York City into a toxic wasteland, cutting its remaining citizens off from one another. In one apartment building, an unlikely family of humans and ghosts survives. Mira reels from a devastating breakup with her partner, Mal, whose whereabouts are unknown, while her mother is plagued by furious dreams and her grandfather, Grandpa Why, stakes his claims as a rambunctious ghost. Across the hall, the cockroach Shin, also a ghost. As the world around them worsens, each character must learn to redefine what it means to live, die, and love at the end of the world.

About the participants:

From Queens, New York, Muriel Leung is the author of the novel How to Fall in Love in a Time of Unnameable Disaster (W.W. Norton & Company) in addition to other books that include the Poetry Society of America’s 2022 Four Quartets Prize winning Imagine Us, The Swarm (Nightboat Books), Bone Confetti (Noemi Press), and Images Seen to Images Felt (Antenna) in collaboration with artist Kristine Thompson. She serves on the Board of Directors for Apogee Journal, a journal dedicated to uplifting historically marginalized writers and artists. She received her PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from University of Southern California where she was an Andrew W. Mellon Humanities in a Digital World fellow. She is permanent faculty at the California Institute of the Arts.

Ryka Aoki is a poet, composer, teacher, and novelist. Her latest novel, Light From Uncommon Stars (Tor Books 2021) was an Alex, SCKA, and Otherwise Award winner, and was also a finalist for the Hugo, Locus, and Ignyte Awards. Ryka is a two-time Lambda Literary Award finalist for her collections Seasonal Velocities and Why Dust Shall Never Settle Upon This Soul. She has been recognized by the California State Senate for “extraordinary commitment to the visibility and well-being of Transgender people,” and her work has appeared or been recognized in publications including Vogue, Elle, Bustle, Autostraddle, PopSugar, and Buzzfeed, as well as the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center. She was also honored to work with the American Association of Hiroshima Nagasaki A-Bomb Survivors, where two of her compositions were adopted as the organization’s “songs of peace."

Host or Publisher Village Well Books & Coffee