Conversation moderated by author Dr. Jaina Sanga
Lauren Groff’s Fates and Furies is a New York Times–bestselling novel about love, art, power, and perception—a portrait of a creative partnership between a young, glamorous couple, madly in love and destined for greatness. Although Lotto and Mathilde’s marriage is the envy of their friends, through riveting plot twists we learn that the key to its success relies on keeping secrets. Fates and Furies was a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Kirkus Prize. Groff is also the author of Florida, a collection of stories exploring motherhood and family that was a finalist for the 2018 National Book Award.
Tessa Hadley, the prize-winning British novelist and short story master who “recruits admirers with each book” (Hilary Mantel), explores the complex webs at the center of our most intimate relationships. In her latest novel, Late in the Day, the 30-year bond between a quartet of close friends comes unglued when one of them dies unexpectedly; old entanglements and grievances rise from the past, and love and sorrow give way to anger and bitterness. Hadley says, “I liked the idea of these intimate relationships as tangled together as the strings in a game of cat's cradle—and the sense that beneath the arrangements we make for our lives, there are always other possible configurations unexplored.” Hadley “crystallizes the atmosphere of ordinary life in prose somehow miraculous and natural” (The Washington Post).