Join us on Wednesday, March 11 at 7pm when we welcome Lauren C. Johnson for the release of her debut novel, The West Façade, with Tara Campbell and Beth Winegarner at 9th Ave!
Free to Attend, Please RSVP
Mask Encouraged for In-Person Attendance
Or Watch on YouTube Live/Link Available Soon
Praise for The West Facade
"Imaginative and immersive, The West Façade is a sensuous fairy tale all about the delights and horrors of the human body. I will never look at statues the same way again."- Rita Chang-Eppig, author of Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea
"A saint who transgresses and a character who yearns, Geneviève pierces her enchantment and sets out to find out what it means to be alive in this lush, sexy dream of a book for fans of Piranesi, Fingersmith, Circe, and the ACOTAR series." -Yohanca Delgado, O. Henry Prize Winner, co-author with Janelle Monáe: The Memory Librarian
About The West Facade
A cathedral statue discovers what it means to be human, then faces an impossible choice: living for herself or lasting forever.
In Paris, at the dawn of the Bubonic Plague, the statues that guard the Notre Dame Cathedral are forbidden from experiencing human pleasures. Even on the wakenings-the one night of life they receive each month on the new moon in exchange for protecting the cathedral. The statue of Sainte Geneviève's quiet existence changes irrevocably when a grieving woman places a citrus fruit in her hands as an offering-an offering Geneviève can't resist eating.
Eating awakens Geneviève to her desires: To climb down the wall, to explore Paris, to understand her human makers, and to love. Geneviève wants to be more than an object on a cathedral wall. She wants to live for herself. But when Geneviève gets what she wants, she must choose between remaining human and accepting mortality or returning to the cathedral, where she will become a statue again and spend eternity watching others live.
About Lauren C. Johnson
Lauren C. Johnson attributes her upbringing in Florida, America’s weirdest state, to her interest in the ecological and surreal. Her writing has appeared in The Rumpus, Orion Magazine online, and more. She earned her MFA in creative writing at American University and lives in San Francisco, where she is a co-host of Babylon Salon, a quarterly Bay Area reading series, and Club Chicxulub, a sci-fi and fantasy performance series. The West Façade is her debut novel.
About the Readers
Tara Campbell (www.taracampbell.com) is a writer, teacher, Kimbilio Fellow, and fiction co-editor at Barrelhouse. She teaches flash and speculative fiction, and is the author of two novels, two hybrid collections, two short story collections, and a chapbook of sestinas. Additional publication credits include Masters Review, Wigleaf, Electric Literature, CRAFT Literary, Uncharted Magazine, Daily Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, and Escape Pod/Artemis Rising.
Beth Winegarner is a journalist and writer who’s contributed to the New York Times, the New Yorker, The Guardian, and many others. She is the author of several books, most recently "San Francisco’s Forgotten Cemeteries: A Buried History," and the co-host of the Dead Reckoning podcast.
Accessibility
The event is located on the ground level, and there are no stairs between the entrance and event space.