Grief, the transformative power of art, the meaning of family, and housing affordability are the subjects of this story about a young theater director returning to her childhood home after her mother’s unexpected death.
Gwen Rivlin, 27, wants to keep the big, shabby house with a turret in which she and her mother both grew up, but everyone tells her it’s crazy: too expensive and too suburban for her. Her schemes to stay in the house keep running up against single-family zoning laws and the disapproval of the neighbors. To help the town wrestle with the way it’s changing, and to assuage her grief, Gwen stages a production of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard–a play about a family struggling to hold onto its own real estate–in the turret house, casting friends, coworkers from the local coffee shop, and various community members, including her estranged-best-friend’s mother. Through the creation of this beautiful and transitory work of art, Gwen heals old breaches, reevaluates her relationship with her difficult mother, and weaves a new, non-traditional family for herself.
Rachel Pastan’s novel, In the Field, based on the life of Nobel Prize-winning geneticist Barbara McClintock, won the inaugural Science + Literature award from the National Book Foundation in 2022. She has also published three other novels: Alena, Lady of the Snakes, and This Side of Married. She is the literary director of Celia Bookshop in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, and former chair of Swarthmore’s housing affordability task force.
Pastan will be in conversation with Matthew Klam, a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Robert Bingham/PEN Award, a Whiting Writer’s Award, and a National Endowment of the Arts. His first book, Sam The Cat and Other Stories, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book of the Year in the category of first fiction, was selected as a Notable Book of the Year by The New York Times, Esquire Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, The Kansas City Star, and by the Borders for their New Voices series. His second book, Who Is Rich?, was selected as Notable Book of the Year by The New York Times and The Washington Post, was nominated for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and was named a best book of the year by Vogue. His work has been featured in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, Esquire, GQ Magazine, and The New York Times Magazine. He currently teaches at Stony Brook University, and in the New Directions Program in Washington, DC. He’s taught creative writing in many places including Johns Hopkins University, St. Albans School, American University, and Stockholm University in Sweden.