Grady Chambers' GREAT DISASTERS In-Store Event and Book Signing

Join us at Mrs. Dalloway's Bookstore on Monday, October 13 at 7:00 PM when author and poet Grady Chambers comes to the store to share his debut novel Great Disasters. Grady will be joined in conversation by Jacob Albert sign copies of his book after the presentation.

to pre-order Great Disasters.

For fans of Ben Lerner’s The Topeka School and Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, Great Disasters is a stirring debut novel about six young men coming of age, and the enduring friendships that make us who we are—even as our paths diverge.

In the early 2000s in Chicago, six young men start high school. Though they’ve been friends since boyhood, their high school years set them on new paths: The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan begin, along with the protests against them; Ryan falls in love but struggles to hold onto it; and he and the others learn to lose themselves in alcohol. With each passing year—as they enter college or the military, then the world beyond; form new relationships with partners and children; and navigate shifting loyalties to a changing country—the narrator feels the group breaking further apart and finds himself asking: What does it mean to move forward, both with and without one another?

Exploring the beauty, hope, and humor that can be found even in moments of deep loneliness and devastation, Grady Chambers’ Great Disasters moves between memories of high school and early adulthood to consider friendship, first love, patriotism, protest, addiction, and more. An exquisitely written, profoundly moving debut novel, Great Disasters is an intimate portrait of disasters big and small, personal and political—and the ways the two are intertwined—and the announcement of a stunning new voice in American fiction.

GRADY CHAMBERS is the author most recently of the debut novel Great Disasters (Tin House). He is also the author of the poetry collection North American Stadiums (Milkweed Editions, 2018) which won the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize. Grady was born and raised on the north side of Chicago, and lives in Philadelphia. His writing can be found in The Atlantic, The Paris Review, American Poetry Review, The Sun, and many other publications. Grady is a former Wallace Stegner Fellow, and received his MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University. More info at gradychambers.com.

JACOB ALBERT is a writer and psychotherapist living in the Bay Area. He was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford, a fellow at the Michener Center for Writers, and currently works at the Psychotherapy Institute in Berkeley.

THIS EVENT is free but registration is requested. Registration ends at 6:00 pm on October 13.

BECAUSE SEATING is limited, please register only if you plan to attend.

DUE TO SPACE limitations, we may not be able to accommodate every person at an event, so early registration is encouraged.

WALK-INS will be accommodated only if space allows.

WE ASK that attendees arrive between 6:45 and 7:00 PM for the event.

PLEASE leave your non-support companion animals at home.

OUR shared restrooms are not accessible after 6:30 PM, please plan accordingly.

Host or Publisher Mrs. Dalloway's Bookstore