Jessica Francis Kane with Christine Grillo: FONSECA

Do you love historical fiction? Ever wanted to know more about Penelope Fitzgerald? We can't recommend Jessica Francis Kane's Fonseca enough for both of these purposes... and now you can hear from the author herself at Bird in Hand on January 14th!

Christine Grillo, author of Hestia Strikes a Match, will join Jessica Francis Kane in conversation as they discuss Fonseca's depiction of Penelope Fitzgerald's real-life journey to Mexico with her son in search of a much-needed inheritance. No spoilers, but when they arrive, nothing goes quite to plan.

With heart, humor, and a deep understanding of her subject that has characterized the range of her work her whole career, Kane (whose work "could have been written by Jane Austen's great great-great-granddaughter" --Oprah Daily) has written much more than an homage: Fonseca is an enthralling world of its own as well as a stunning fictionalization of a season in Fitzgerald's life.

Looking forward to hearing more from the author, with you!

Order FONSECA here!

Jessica Francis Kane is the author of the national bestseller Rules for Visiting, This Close, The Report, and Bending Heaven. This Close was longlisted for The Story Prize, The Report was a finalist for The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and Rules for Visiting was longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. Her stories and essays have appeared in many publications, including Harper’s Magazine, The New York Times, Slate, Virginia Quarterly Review, McSweeney’s, ZYZZYVA, and Granta. She lives in New York City and Connecticut.

Christine Grillo is a writer and editor covering food systems, agriculture, and climate change, whose nonfiction has been published in outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic: CityLab, Audubon, NextTribe, and Real Simple. Her short fiction has appeared in Story Quarterly, The Southern Review, and LIT.

Hestia Strikes a Match (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2023) is her debut novel. It was included in NPR’s Books We Love 2023 and DCTrending’s Annual Holiday Booklist, and it was shortlisted for the Crooks Corner Book Prize.

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