Amy Shearn - "Dear Edna Sloane" - Emily Gray Tedrowe

Amy Shearn will discuss Dear Edna Sloane. She will be joined in conversation by Emily Gray Tedrowe.

A Q&A and signing will follow the discussion. 

At 57th Street Books. 

RSVP HERE (Please note that your RSVP is requested but not required.)

About the Book: Dear Edna Sloane is a funny, fast-paced epistolary novel about fame, writers, ambition, and the ups and downs of a creative life. Edna Sloane was a promising author at the top of her game. Her debut novel was an instant classic and commercial success, vaulting her into the heady echelons of the 1980s New York City lit scene. Then she disappeared and was largely forgotten. Decades later, Seth Edwards is an aspiring writer and editor who feels he’s done all the right things to achieve literary success, but despairs that his dream will be forever out of reach. He becomes obsessed with the idea that if he can rediscover Sloane, it will make his career. His search for her leads to unexpected places and connections, and the epistolary correspondence that ensues makes up this book, a novel infused with insights and meditations about what our cultural obsession with the "next big thing" does to literature, and what it means to be a creative person in the world.

About the Author: Amy Shearn is the award-winning author of the novels Unseen City, The Mermaid of Brooklyn, and How Far Is the Ocean From Here, plus the forthcoming novels Dear Edna Sloane (Red Hen Press, 2024) and Animal Instinct (Putnam, 2025). She has worked as an editor at Medium, Conde Nast, and other organizations, and has taught creative writing at NYU, the Yale Writers' Workshop, and the Writing Co-Lab, an experimental educational cooperative she helped to found. Amy's essays have appeared in many publications including the New York Times Modern Love column, Slate, and Literary Hub. A native Midwesterner, Amy grew up in suburban Chicago, went to University of Iowa, and has an MFA from the University of Minnesota. You can find her at amyshearnwrites.com or @amyshearn.

About the Interlocutor: Emily Gray Tedrowe is the Chicago-based author of the novels The Talented Miss Farwell, Blue Stars, and Commuters. She earned a PhD in English literature from New York University, and a BA from Princeton University. She has received an Illinois Arts Council award as well as fellowships from the Ragdale Foundation, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Sewanee Writers Conference. A frequent book reviewer for USA Today as well as other publications, Tedrowe also writes essays, interviews, and short stories.