Come join us at the bookshop for a reading and conversation between debut authors Jiordan Castle, author of Disappearing Act, and Kate Doyle, author of I Meant It Once.

Castle's memoir-in-verse has been lauded as "searingly honest," "heartbreaking," and "a heart-wrenching look at the cognitive dissonance that occurs when trying to reconcile who someone is with who you want them to be," while Doyle's short stories have been called, "by turns funny, melancholy, wry, and piercing in their insight" and "something to be savored." Both authors explore the tension of growing up and forming identities in an often unforgiving culture, and a powerful navigation of family bonds and friendship breaks.

Author Bios:

Jiordan Castle is the author of Disappearing Act, a memoir in verse, and the chapbook All His Breakable Things. Her work has appeared in HuffPost, The New Yorker, The Rumpus, Taco Bell Quarterly, and elsewhere. She is a contributor to the LA-based food and culture magazine Compound Butter. Originally from New York, she has an MFA in Poetry from Hunter College and lives in Philadelphia.

Kate Doyle is an American writer in Amsterdam—before that in Ithaca, NY, and before that in New York City. Her debut story collection I Meant It Once will publish in July 2023.  A former bookseller at Buffalo Street Books in Ithaca, Kate has published her stories in No Tokens, Electric Literature, Split Lip, Wigleaf, ANMLY, and elsewhere. In 2021 she was selected from 1100 emerging writers as an A Public Space Writing Fellow, and she has received support for her work from Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Hawthornden, the Adirondack Center for Writing, NYU Paris, and the Community Arts Partnership of Tompkins County.  I Meant It Once is forthcoming from Algonquin Books in the U.S. and Corsair in the U.K. on July 18. Originally, Kate is from the corner of New England closest to New York City—or that’s the short answer to where she’s from, anyway. She has a dog who loves books as much as she does.