The Writer’s Center welcomes novelist Nancy Garruba for a reading and discussion of her debut novel, The Vanishing of Rose B. Nancy is in conversation with Katherine Gekker. FREE & open to the public. RSVP below.
Nancy Garruba studied Comparative Literature at Rutgers University. She later trained in the conservation of rare books in Florence, Italy and at the Library of Congress, work which led to her study of bookmaking history, book design and photography, and to the making of artist’s books—her writing combined with visual images. Nancy has received grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the DC Commission on the Arts, and the American Institute of Graphic Arts for her Skin of Glass and Not Altogether True Not Altogether False. The Vanishing of Rose B. is her debut novel.
Katherine Gekker’s first full-length collection, In Search of Warm Breathing Things, was published by Glass Lyre Press in 2019. Her poetry has been called “affecting” and “elusive” by the New York Times, and “ethereal” and “sensuous” by other newspapers. Her poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart Prizes. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Calyx, Quartet Journal, Rappahannock Review, Delmarva Review, Little Patuxent Review, Gargoyle, ASP Bulletin, Broadkill Review, Baltimore Review, Northern Virginia Review, Poetry South, Claudius Speaks, Last Call Anthology, and others. A collection of eight poems, Childhood Poems, was published in 1974.
About The Vanishing of Rose B.
Rose B. defied mid-century expectations of what a woman could be and do. Not only a devoted wife and mother, and one never to be seen without gloves and a hat, she was the family’s main breadwinner. Exemplary, indeed—although in private, Rose suffered her charismatic, volatile husband’s abuse, abuse witnessed by their twin daughters, Claire and Frances. Frances urged Rose to divorce, Claire played mediator, and Rose persevered, determined to preserve her family, even if at cost to herself. But a violent incident one spring evening would upset Rose’s plan and propel Frances to a life far from her parents and sister.
Decades later, Claire’s a reclusive high school art teacher who creates beautiful photographs but never exhibits. Frances is an architect in Los Angeles. Rose has died, and Frances has flown home to help Claire sort through their mother’s clothes. Claire, insisting that Frances is their mother’s mirror image, one that she must capture, asks Frances to pose for her as Rose, dressed in Rose’s clothes. Frances, wanting to force a discussion of that long-ago violent spring evening, agrees, but on one condition: She’ll tell stories as she poses, stories about Rose. Told in two voices—that of the dynamic, conflicted Frances and the tender, diffident Claire, who has her own stories about Rose—The Vanishing of Rose B. explores the difficulties mothers and daughters encounter in defining themselves within the world and against each other.
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