Tommy Hays in conversation with Jessica Handler | The Marriage Bed

Name: Tommy Hays in conversation with Jessica Handler | The Marriage Bed
Start: 2026-04-10T18:00:00-05:00
Location: Manuel's Tavern

Schedule

Fri, 10 Apr, 2026 at 06:00 pm

UTC-05:00

Location

Manuel's Tavern | Atlanta, GA

A freak accident comes on the heels of a startling revelation—laying bare the foundation of a marriage, and a husband is left to grapple with the aftermath.
A Cappella Books is delighted to welcome author Tommy Hays to Manuel’s Tavern in honor of his new novel, “The Marriage Bed.” Hays will appear in conversation with Jessica Handler, award-winning author of “The Magnetic Girl.”
This event is free and open to the public; copies of the book will be available for purchase.
About the Book
A poetry professor at a small college in Asheville, NC, Asa Flowers, comes home one stormy evening to find his wife Betsy inexplicably distraught. As the evening goes on, the couple end up in a heated argument that sends Asa to sleep out in their garage apartment for the first time in twenty-five years of marriage. The next morning, he wakes to blue sky and an altered world.
Unfolding over a few tense weeks and told from multiple points of view, this novel explores how a tragedy can assume as many shapes as the people it touches. Asa finds himself reckoning with torn feelings about his marriage and confusion about how to proceed in his complicated relationships with his adult children. As he gradually absorbs revelations—so much he didn't know or understand during his long marriage—he finds himself drawn uneasily toward a new world, one in which he must shed much of his old identity if he is to survive, and more important, rededicate himself to being a father.
About the Author
Tommy Hays is an acclaimed Southern writer, whose fiction grows out of his emotional connections to places he’s lived and known—Greenville, South Carolina; Asheville, North Carolina; and Atlanta. His novels are "The Pleasure Was Mine" (St. Martin’s Press 2005), "In the Family Way" (Random House, 1999), "Sam’s Crossing" (Atheneum 1992), and YA novel "What I Came to Tell You" (Egmont, USA 2013). He has published stories, profiles and book reviews in magazines, newspapers and literary journals such as Redbook, Our State, The Atlanta Constitution, The Charlotte Observer, Smoky Mountain Living, Still:The Journal, The Chattahoochee Review, and storySouth.
The winner of many literary awards, he is founder and former Executive Director of the Great Smokies Writing Program, UNC Asheville’s community writing program as well as Lecturer Emeritus in the Master of Liberal Arts program.
About the Conversation Partner
Jessica Handler is the acclaimed author of award-winning novels and celebrated nonfiction, with features on NPR, in Tin House, Electric Literature, The Bitter Southerner, The Washington Post, and elsewhere.