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Literary Lunch: Susan Conley talks about Landslide with Jaed Coffin
12:00pm - 1:00pm
Location: Literary Lunch: Susan Conley talks about Landslide with Jaed Coffin
Audience: Adults
https://networkmaine.zoom.us/j/84984472776
About the book
After a fishing accident leaves her husband hospitalized across the border in Canada, Jill is left to look after her teenage 
boys–“the wolves”–alone. Nothing comes easy in their remote corner of Maine: money is tight; her son Sam is getting into more trouble by the day; her eldest, Charlie, is preoccupied with a new girlfriend; and Jill begins to suspect her marriage isn’t as stable as she once believed. As one disaster gives way to the next, she begins to think that it’s not enough to be a caring wife and mother anymore–not enough to show up when needed, to nudge her boys in the right direction, to believe everything will be okay. But how to protect this life she loves, this household, this family?With remarkable poise and startling beauty, Landslide ushers us into a modern household where, for a family at odds, Instagram posts, sex-positivity talks, and old fishing tales mingle to become a kind of love language. It is a beautiful portrait of a family, as compelling as it is moving, and raises the question of how to remain devoted when the eye of the storm closes in.
About the authors
Susan Conley is the author of five books, including her new novel Landslide (Knopf, February, 2021). Her previous novel, Elsey Come Home, was a Most Anticipated/Best Book at Oprah Magazine, Marie Claire, Amazon, Pop Sugar, Huffington Post, Southern Living,Fodors, and others. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Harvard Review, and others. She’s been awarded multiple fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, as well as fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, The Maine Arts Commission, and the Massachusetts Arts Council. She’s won the Maine Book Award and the Maine Award for Publishing Excellence and has been a featured Tedx Speaker, where her talk the “Power of Story,” has been viewed widely. She’s taught at many colleges and arts residencies including Emerson College, Colby College, The University of Massachusetts, as the Jack Kerouac Visiting Fellow, The Haystack School, The Spannochia Foundation, La Napoule Foundation, and The Beijing Hutong. She’s on the faculty of the Stonecoast MFA Program and is co-founder of the Telling Room, a writing center in Portland, Maine.
Jaed Coffin is an assistant professor of creative writing (nonfiction/fiction) in the English 
department and M.F.A. program. His is the author of the books A Chant to Soothe Wild Elephants, and Roughhouse Friday. He has published over forty articles and essays in a broad range of journals and magazines, and has also served as the Wilson Fellow in Creative Writing at Deerfield Academy, a Resident Fellow at the Island Institute in Sitka, Alaska, and the William Sloane Fellow at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. In 2015, he was a featured storyteller on the MOTH Radio Hour.
+1 646 876 9923 US (New York)
About the Series » Literary Lunch Series
Portland Public Library’s Literary Lunch series is held monthly and features authors from New England in conversation 
about new works. Authors are interviewed by literary friends, colleagues or critics.
All Literary Lunches are free to the public. Because they take place over the lunch hour, guests are encouraged to bring their lunch! Coffee is generously provided by Coffee By Design.
Questions about our Literary Lunch Series? Please send us an e-mail.