On Thursday, June 1st at 7:30pm Warwick's will host Steven Rowley as he discusses and signs his new book, The Celebrants, in conversation with Byron Lane. Steven Rowley is the bestselling author of four novels including Lily and the Octopus, a Washington Post Notable Book of 2016; The Editor, an NPR Best Book of 2019; and The Guncle, winner of the 22nd Thurber Prize for American Humor and Goodreads Choice Awards finalist for Novel of the Year. His fiction has been translated in twenty languages. He resides in Palm Springs, California.
A Big Chill for our times, celebrating decades-long friendships and promises - especially to ourselves - by the bestselling and beloved author of The Guncle.
It's been a minute - or five years - since Jordan Vargas last saw his college friends, and twenty-eight years since their graduation when their adult lives officially began. Now Jordan, Jordy, Naomi, Craig, and Marielle find themselves at the brink of a new decade, with all the responsibilities of adulthood, yet no closer to having their lives figured out. Though not for a lack of trying. Over the years they've reunited in Big Sur to honor a decades-old pact to throw each other living "funerals," celebrations to remind themselves that life is worth living - that their lives mean something, to one another if not to themselves.
But this reunion is different. They're not gathered as they were to bolster Marielle as her marriage crumbled, to lift Naomi after her parents died, or to intervene when Craig pleaded guilty to art fraud. This time, Jordan is sitting on a secret that will upend their pact.
A deeply honest tribute to the growing pains of selfhood and the people who keep us going, coupled with Steven Rowley's signature humor and heart, The Celebrants is a moving tale about the false invincibility of youth and the beautiful ways in which friendship helps us celebrate our lives, even amid the deepest challenges of living.
Byron Lane is author of A Star Is Bored, hailed by the New York Times Book Review as "wildly funny and irreverent." He's a playwright, screenwriter, Emmy Award-winning journalist, and former assistant to actress Carrie Fisher. He's originally from New Orleans and lives in Palm Springs, California, with his husband, author Steven Rowley, and their rescue dogs, Raindrop and Shirley.
About Byron’s new book, Big Gay Wedding:
Two grooms. One mother of a problem.
Barnett Durang has a secret. No, not THAT secret. His widowed mother has long known he's gay. The secret is Barnett is getting married. At his mother's farm. In their small Louisiana town. She just doesn't know it yet.
It'll be an intimate affair. Just two hundred or so of the most fabulous folks Barnett is shipping in from the "heathen coasts," as Mom likes to call them, turning her quiet rescue farm for misfit animals into a most unlikely wedding venue.
But there are forces, both within this modern new family and in the town itself, that really don't want to see this handsome couple march down the aisle. It'll be the biggest, gayest event in the town's history if they can pull it off, and after a glitter-filled week, nothing will ever be the same. Big Gay Wedding is an uplifting book about the power of family and the unconditional love of a mother for her son.
