Join us in welcoming friends and fellow authors Kimberly King Parsons and Caoillin Hughes to celebrate the release of their new novels, THE ALTERNATIVES (Riverhead Books, April 2024) and WE WERE THE UNIVERSE (Knopf, May 2024). Both Kimberly and Caoilinn will give brief readings from their respective books followed by a discussion, Q&A, and book signing! 

This event comes to you and yours with support from Culture Ireland.

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About the Books

We Were the Universe, somehow Kimberly’s first novel, covers the impossible and relatable ground of the life of a young woman and mother following the death of her sister years prior, and her seeming incapability of “returning” to normal. This book encapsulates the multifaceted head of grief in the inner dialogue of its protagonist: hilarious, absurd, intense, punctuated with guilt and (queer) longing. Sentimentality gets it butt kicked with all sorts of pangs and prose you want to get lost in.

Melissa Broder, author of novels such as Milk Fed, writes, “Kimberly King Parsons reveals the shapeshifting nature of grief, the wiliness of desire, the fluidity of linear time, and the truth that what begs to be felt will always find a way to be felt,” and Karen Russel of Swamplandia! fame accurately says of the novel, “Kimberly King Parsons sings the lushest, cruelest, kindest, weirdest, darkest and most hilarious songs on paper; I want to hang these sentences in my house and admire them like the interdimensional multisensory illuminated artworks they truly are. We Were the Universe is a grief-and-lust-and-breastmilk saturated psychedelic journey, a story told in the eternal present of an acid trip and the spiraling everyday life of a young Texan mother, pushing her daughter’s stroller around an unspeakable loss. This novel is a tonal masterpiece, a record I want to spin forever, and I feel so lucky that I can return to its deep magic.”

"I wish I knew how Caoilinn Hughes has managed to write a book of such depth and gravity that is also so gripping and relentlessly funny,” writes Hernan Diaz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Trust about The Alternatives, “A tale about sisterhood, a novel of ideas, a chronicle of our collective follies, a requiem for our agonizing species, The Alternatives unfolds in a prose full of gorgeous surprises and glows with intelligence, compassion, and beauty." 

The Alternatives features the narratives of four Irish sisters, the Flatterys, though orphaned in childhood, are now all in their 30’s attempting to find meaning in brilliance and work. It’s only when the eldest, a geologist, vanishes do the other sisters reconnect and face the unconfronted holes in their lives, from past to future. This novel is packed with winding adventure, and is startlingly and successfully character-driven. Play-like and gorgeously complex, this novel is unique and with fantastic writing. Louise Kennedy, author of Trespasses, writes, "Caoilinn Hughes is one of the most intelligent, surprising, and delightful writers around. The Alternatives made me laugh, cry, and think. Any one of the Flattery sisters would have made a compelling story; together they are glorious, as is this novel."

Author Bios:

Caoilinn Hughes is the author of The Wild Laughter, which won the Royal Society of Literature’s Encore Award and was longlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize, and Orchid & the Wasp, which won the Collyer Bristow Prize and was longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award. She was recently the Oscar Wilde Centre Writer Fellow at Trinity College Dublin, and is currently a Cullman Center Fellow at New York Public Library.

Kimberly King Parsons is the author of Black Light, a collection of stories that was long-listed for the National Book Award and the Story Prize. In 2020, she received the National Magazine Award for fiction. Born in Lubbock, Texas, she lives in Portland, Oregon, with her partner and children. We Were the Universe is her first novel.