Wed 4/10 @ 7:30PM
Chicago area novelist and short story writer Rebecca Makkai was a teacher for more than a decade before publishing her first book, The Borrower, in 2011. It was an immediate hit, an Oprah O Magazine book selection and translated into seven languages. But it was with 2018’s The Great Believers that she really made her mark: it won numerous prizes and was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Set in Chicago in the 1980s during the AIDS epidemic and 30 years later, it revolves around an art gallery development director who friends all succumb to the disease and the impact of it decades later. And she’s used the book’s popularity to raise money for AIDS-related organizations.
Last year, she published her fourth novel, I Have Some Questions for You, a mystery story in which a woman returns to her former boarding school where she’s confronted again by the murder of her roommate during their senior year. Like The Great Believers, it moves between two different eras.
Makkai is coming to Cleveland as part of the Cuyahoga County Public Library’s Writers Center Stage series at the Maltz Performing Arts Center. There she’ll talk about her writing process and the background of her books. She’ll also sign books after the program. Go here for tickets.
writers-center-stage/rebecca-makkai