Following the breakout success of her critically acclaimed and award-winning novel Euphoria, Lily King returns with another instant New York Times bestseller: an unforgettable portrait of an artist as a young woman. Blindsided by her mother’s sudden death and wrecked by a recent love affair, Casey Peabody has arrived in Massachusetts in the summer of 1997 without a plan. Her mail consists of wedding invitations and final notices from debt collectors. A former child golf prodigy, she now waits tables in Harvard Square and rents a tiny, moldy room at the side of a garage where she works on the novel she’s been writing for six years. At thirty-one, Casey is still clutching onto something nearly all her old friends have let go of: the determination to live a creative life. When she falls for two very different men at the same time, her world fractures even more. Casey’s fight to fulfill her creative ambitions and balance the conflicting demands of art and life is challenged in ways that push her to the brink.
Writers & Lovers follows Casey—a smart and achingly vulnerable protagonist—in the last days of a long youth, a time when every element of her life comes to a crisis. Written with King’s trademark humor, heart, and intelligence, Writers & Lovers is a transfixing novel that explores the terrifying and exhilarating leap between the end of one phase of life and the beginning of another. As she creates this new life, Casey has to balance her passions and livelihood while navigating grief and romance. While there is a captivating love story, “[r]omance isn’t the point for Casey. Love is the gravy; words are the filet. Finding a way to build a life around work she loves, finding a way to support herself as a writer — this is the line connecting all three corners of the love triangle at the heart of this novel.”—Elisabeth Egan, New York Times Book Review
About the Author: Lily King’s novel Father of The Rain (2010) was a New York Times Editors Choice, a Publishers Weekly Best Novel of the Year and winner of the 2010 New England Book Award for Fiction and the Maine Fiction Award. The English Teacher (2005) won the Maine Fiction Award, was a Publishers Weekly Top Ten Book of the Year and a Chicago Tribune Best Book of the Year. Her first novel, The Pleasing Hour (1999), won the B&N Discover Award, was a New York Times Notable Book and an alternate for the PEN/Hemingway Award. King is also the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award. She lives with her husband and children in Maine.
About the Junior League of Richmond: The Book and Author Event has long been one of the JLR’s largest fundraisers with the funds benefitting the Junior League’s work in the greater Richmond community. The Junior League of Richmond has been involved in key initiatives and advocacy efforts that have improved the well-being of women, children and families. The 75th Book and Author Event will take place virtually on Thursday, May 7th. At 7 p.m. For more information about the event and to purchase tickets, please visit www.bookandauthorevent.org.