Offsite: Emma Straub: American Fantasy w/ Lin-Manuel Miranda

Event guidelines:

• Additional copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event.
• A signing line will follow the talk.
• The conversation will be livestreamed for free online here: https://youtube.com/live/yeGcT1CBw1o
• Home address is collected for contact tracing purposes; it will not be used otherwise.
• As a reminder: If you are not feeling well, please do not come to the event, even if you have a ticket; email us and we'll work it out.

If you have any questions regarding these guidelines or to request accessibility accommodations, please contact [email protected].

From New York Times bestselling author of This Time Tomorrow, an irresistible story about what happens when your teenage fantasy comes true after you’re already an adult.

When the American Fantasy cruise ship sets sail for a four-day themed voyage, aboard are all five members of a famous 1990s boyband, and three thousand screaming women who have worshipped them for thirty years.

Newly divorced and with an empty nest, Annie is on board as a lark to appease her sister. Once a diehard fan of the band as a teen, her tastes have matured, and she feels out of place amid the sea of bedazzled, air-brushed t-shirts bearing the singers’ faces. Yet when the lights come up and the idols of her youth begin to sing before her, something is unlocked. “Maybe that was nostalgia after all, the music a direct vein to her childhood, the least complicated part of her life. A short cut to happiness.” Between the slushy alcoholic drinks, the music of her youth, and the thousands of middle-aged women acting like lovesick teenagers, Annie finally reconnects to a long-submerged part of herself. By the time she befriends one of the band members -- not just a celebrity but someone also in need of a friend -- she feels like anything is possible. But a lot can go wrong on a ship ruled by hormones and hope, frustration and fantasy.

Packed with wisdom, heart, and laugh-out-loud reflections on fame, youth, nostalgia, marriage, and middle age, Emma Straub delivers a richly textured, uplifting story about the magic of revisiting youthful feelings, and the even greater magic of starting anew.

Emma Straub is the New York Times bestselling author of six books for adults: the novels This Time Tomorrow, All Adults Here, The Vacationers, Modern Lovers, Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures, and the short story collection Other People We Married. She is a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow and her work has been published in more than 20 languages. Emma and her husband own Books Are Magic, an independent bookstore in Brooklyn, New York.

Lin-Manuel Miranda is a Pulitzer Prize, Grammy, Emmy, and Tony Award-winning songwriter, actor and director, as well as a New York Times bestselling author (Hamilton: The Revolution; Gmorning, Gnight!: Little Pep Talks for Me & You). He is the creator and original star of Broadway’s Tony-winning Hamilton and In the Heights. Additional Broadway: Freestyle Love Supreme (Co-Founder, Guest Star), Bring It On: The Musical (co-composer/co-lyricist), and West Side Story (2009 revival, Spanish translations). He is a recipient of the 2015 MacArthur Foundation Award, 2019 Portrait of a Nation Prize and 2018 Kennedy Center Honors. He lives with his family in New York.

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