Norah Labiner presents Morocco in conversation with Mike Wisti

In this intricate tale, a woman untangles her enduring bond with an heiress who she is still trying to understand…

Chicago, the turn of the 21st century. Our narrator—always there and never entirely present—recounts her decades-long relationship with the heiress, Katherine Stern. Through the years since boarding school, she has seen Katherine as a daughter who wants for nothing but respect from her psychotherapist father, as a woman with a kind, but fortune-hunting fiancée, and as a mystery even more confounding than the gothic horror stories she evaluates from the slush pile at her job. Sometimes, despite their estrangement, she has even seen Katherine as a friend.

Inspired by the classic story Washington Square by Henry James, Norah Labiner reimagines the prolific tale. Moving through wintery Michigan avenue to the creeping mansions of the rich to the world of melodrama, ghosts, and girls. Morocco confronts the ambiguity of memory, the horrors of history, and what it means, or does not mean, to read a book and tell a story.

Norah Labiner is the author of the novels Our Sometime Sister, Miniatures, German for Travelers, and Let the Dark Flower Blossom (Coffee House Press). She has received a Minnesota Book Award for Literary Fiction and currently lives in Minnesota.

Mike Wisti is a songwriter/musician. His indie rock band Rank Strangers has released 24 records. Rank Strangers new album Ribizza is available Fall 2026 on Veto Records. He is the founder of Albatross recording studio. He is committed to an analog recording process, working with such luminaries as Lifter Puller, Brute Heart, and Grant Hart. Rank Strangers had a star on the wall of the venerable rock club First Avenue, until it was painted over. He lives in Minneapolis.

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