Thomas Kohnstamm in Conversation With Dane Bahr- Supersonic

Schedule

Fri Mar 21 2025 at 06:00 pm to 07:00 pm

UTC-07:00

Location

Village Books and Paper Dreams | Bellingham, WA

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Join us to welcome Seattle author Thomas Kohnstamm in conversation with Dane Bahr for Kohnstamm's newest book, Supersonic!
About this Event

When PTA president Sami Hasegawa-Stalworth petitions to rename a Seattle elementary school after her late grandmother, she ignites a battle over the school's future and the history of its surrounding neighborhood. Supersonic launches readers into a kaleidoscopic tale of the generations of interrelated families who breathed life into that small, hilltop community.
The story cuts in time from the arrival of white settlers' ships to the last indigenous landowner fighting to hold on to scraps of his ancestral home and back to the school's PTA auction. It interweaves an opioid-addicted nineteenth-century con man–cum–civic booster, a disgraced Navy seaman building an airplane that travels faster than sound, a stay-at-home dad hustling to open the city's first legal W**d shop and Sami's grandmother, a survivor of Japanese American incarceration during World War II, who founded the school's once-celebrated music program.
The novel traces their false starts, triumphs, and heartbreaks through the booms and busts of the Yukon gold rush, the jet age, Big Tech, and beyond. By exploring the converging and often clashing personalities that make up the dynamic soul of a place, Supersonic illuminates themes of identity, displacement, destruction, and reinvention that give rise to all great American cities.


"Masterfully rendered and mercilessly readable. Kohnstamm populates these pages with insight, hilarity, emotion, and unforgettable characters. Supersonic is a novel with so much narrative propulsion that it manages to live up to its name." —Jonathan Evison, author of Small World and Lawn Boy


Thomas Kohnstamm was born and raised in Seattle and still lives in the same house he grew up in—now with his wife and two children. He's a career-long freelance writer and has run his own video and animation studio for over a decade. Supersonic is his third book.


Dane Bahr was born in Minnesota. He is the author of The Houseboat and Stag. He lives in Washington State with his wife and dog, watching his sons and orchard grow.

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Where is it happening?

Village Books and Paper Dreams, 1200 11th Street, Bellingham, United States

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Tickets

USD 6.24 to USD 35.32

Village Books

Host or Publisher Village Books

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