Muriel Leung & Yanyi — How to Fall in Love in a Time of Unnameable Disaster

Third Place Books is thrilled to welcome Muriel Leung to our Ravenna store for a discussion of her debut novel, . She will be joined in conversation by Yanyi. This event is free and open to the public.

For important updates, RSVP is highly recommended in advance. This event will include a public signing and time for audience Q&A. Sustain our author series by purchasing a copy of the featured book!

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This event is free to attend. Registration is required in advance.

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.

Muriel Leung is the author of the novel How to Fall in Love in a Time of Unnameable Disaster (W.W. Norton & Company), 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 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 faculty at California Institute of the Arts.
Yanyi is the author of Dream of the Divided Field (One World 2022) and The Year of Blue Water (Yale 2019), winner of the 2018 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize. Most recently, he is the recipient of a 2023 Vermont Arts Council Grant and a 2022 Tanne Foundation Award. He gives creative writing advice at his newsletter, The Reading, and teaches poetry at the Warren Wilson MFA for Writers program.

Founded in 1998 in Lake Forest Park, Washington, Third Place Books is dedicated to the creation of a community around books and the ideas inside them. With locations in Lake Forest Park and Seattle's Ravenna and Seward Park neighborhoods, Third Place Books is proud to serve the entire Seattle metro area. Learn more about their event series at thirdplacebooks.com/events.

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