About

Sit down with Pulitzer-prize finalist Adam Haslett and four-time Giller Prize nominee Shani Mootoo for an illuminating talk on the power of storytelling to confront memory, reshape identity, and test the familial bonds that define who we are. In his latest novel, Mothers and Sons, Haslett follows Peter, a solitary immigration lawyer, and his estranged mother as a young asylum case forces them to revisit the traumatic secret that divided them. Mootoo’s innovative work of autofiction, Starry Starry Night, tenderly chronicles young Anju’s coming-of-age in 1960s Trinidad amid family tensions and colonial change.

Moderated by Lisa de Nikolits

Mothers and Sons: A Novel

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Starry Starry Night

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Adam Haslett

Adam Haslett is the author of the story collection You Are Not a Stranger Here and the novels Union Atlantic and Imagine Me Gone. He has twice been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, as well as a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award and a winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

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Shani Mootoo

Shani Mootoo is the author of six novels, three collections of poetry, and one short story collection. She is a four-time Giller Prize nominee, and her work has been long and shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the Lambda Literary Prize, and the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

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