The Writer’s Center welcomes Kerry L. Malawista to celebrate the release of her new novel, Meet the Moon. Kerry will be in conversation with author Susan Richards Shreve. Book signing and reception to follow.
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Kerry L. Malawista is a writer and psychoanalyst in Potomac, MD. She is co-chair of New Directions in Writing, a Board Member at the Washington Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis, and founder of the recent project The Things They Carry – offering virtual writing workshops for healthcare and frontline workers. Her essays have appeared nationally in newspapers, magazines and literary journals including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun, The Boston Globe, Zone 3, Washingtonian Magazine, The Huffington Post, Bethesda Magazine, Arlington Magazine, The Account Magazine, and Delmarva Review, which nominated her for a Pushcart Prize. She is the co-author of Wearing my Tutu to Analysis and Other Stories (2011), The Therapist in Mourning: From the Faraway Nearby (2013), both published by Columbia University Press, and Who’s Behind the Couch (2017) published by Routledge Press. When the Garden Isn’t Eden, a second “tutu book” will be published by Columbia University Press spring 2022 and her novel, Meet the Moon September 2022.
Susan Shreve is the author of fifteen novels, most recently You Are the Love of My Life, a memoir Warm Springs: Traces of a Childhood and twenty-nine books for children. She has edited or co-edited five anthologies and her essays have appeared in several collections as well as The New York Times, The Washington Post and several magazines. She was co-founder and has been a Professor in the Master of Fine Arts Program at George Mason University for more than forty years. Susan has been a Jenny Moore Fellow at George Washington University, a visiting writer at Princeton University, for several years at the School of the Arts of Columbia University, Bennington College Summer Seminars and Goucher College. In 1985, she co-founded the PEN/Faulkner Foundation and served for thirty years most recently as Chairman. She has been a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Fiction, a grant in fiction from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Grub Street Award in Non-Fiction, the Alumni Award at the Sidwell Friends School, and the Writers for Writers Award from Poets and Writers. She serves on the Advisory Board of Poets and Writers, the Advisory Board of 826DC and the board for The Cheuse International Center at George Mason University.
About the Book
“…Delightfully poignant and equally funny, this story reminiscent of Judy Blume will no doubt steal the heart of readers of all ages – just like it did mine.” –Jennifer Richard Jacobson, author of Small as an Elephant
“Jody Moran is an endearing guide – funny, smart, word-wise – through this sad and triumphant coming-of-age tale. There is such clarifying honesty here, about grief, friendship, resilience and faith. There is as well a keen and vivid sense of an era that seems more innocent than our own and yet remarkably timeless, perhaps because Kerry Malawista understands so well the enduring grace of family love.” –Alice McDermott, Charming Billy (National Book Award), After This (finalist Pulitzer Prize)
In 1970, 13-year-old Jody Moran wants pierced ears, a kiss from a boy, and more attention from her mother. It’s not fair. Seems like her mother is more worked up about the Apollo 13 astronauts, who may not make it back to earth safely. As it happens, the astronauts are spared a crash landing, but Jody is not, for three days after splashdown, her mother dies in a car accident. Now, Jody will never know if her mother really loved her. Jody’s father has taught them to believe in the “Power of Intention.” Announce what you want to the world to make it happen. But could the power of Jody’s jealousy and anger have caused Mom’s accident? To relieve her guilt and sadness, she devotes herself to mothering her three younger siblings and helping Dad, which quickly proves too much for her, just as persuading quirky Grandma Cupcakes to live with them proves too much for Grandma. That’s when Jody decides to find someone to marry her father, a new mom who will love her best. Jody reads high and low to learn about love, marriage and death. For her adolescent firsts—kiss, bra, and boyfriend—she has the help of her popular older sister, her supportive father, and comical Grandma. But each first, which makes her miss her mother, teaches her that death doesn’t happen just once.
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