Geoff Peck "City of Clans," with Ed Simon (collab with PRoB)

In collaboration with Pittsburgh Review of Books, we are excited to host Geoff Peck in-store to celebrate his new novel, City of Clans. Geoff will be in conversation with Ed Simon.
"Brutal but spiked with hope, City of Clans is the antidote to toxic masculinity we’ve been waiting for. It’s a lively, if chilling novel that takes shades from The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and A Little Life and applies them to the Pennsylvania steel mills, warehouses, and college bars of the early Obama era." —Salvatore Pane, author, The Neorealist in Winter
Set on the eve of the 2009 G20 Summit protests, City of Clans follows Jeremy Starcevic, a community college student struggling with his identity and sexuality. By day, Jeremy works for a party goods distributor in the heart of the city and attends classes. By night, he drinks to excess and self-sabotages at the urging of friends. As the son of a professional baseball player, Jeremy grew up playing sports and molding himself into a certain type of guy—a type embodied in Jeremy’s best friend and roommate, the hypermasculine Scott Melloy. But when Scott commits an unthinkable act, Jeremy is forced to acknowledge that the friend he idolized is a sexual predator, and his carefully constructed sense of self crumbles.
Jeremy begins a journey of healing and self-reflection that carries him back to his family and his one true friend, Katrina Kovacs, a photography major who opens his eyes to societal issues he’s always ignored. A story of redemption, City of Clans captures the resiliency of the human spirit and explores hidden truths of masculinity, sexuality, and self.
GEOFF PECK teaches creative writing at Winona State University. His poetry has been nominated for Best New American Poets and awarded the Thomas McGrath Prize by the Academy of American Poets. Peck lives in Winona, Minnesota.
ED SIMON is the Editor-in-Chief of The Pittsburgh Review of Books, a Public Humanities Lecturer in the English Department at CMU, and a widely published author of over a dozen books, including Devil’s Contract: The History of the Faustian Bargain, which was named one of the best books of 2024 by The New Yorker. A monthly columnist for Literary Hub, as well as a contributing editor at The Montreal Review, Simon has written for publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, and The New Republic.
PITTSBURGH REVIEW OF BOOKS tackles problems, evaluates probabilities, and problematizes issues. An interdisciplinary humanities periodical housed in Carnegie Mellon University’s Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences and published by the English Department, PRoB features essays, reviews, interviews, and excerpts that engage with salient and pressing issues. True to Pittsburgh’s historical reputation for hard work and creativity, PRoB is committed to the democratic, visionary, and inclusive values that have defined this city at its best.

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