Author Event: Joe Fassler In-Conversation with Mathangi Subramanian
Event description
Join us for an author event with Denver's own, Joe Fassler, to discuss his new book, The Sky Was Ours. Joe will be in-conversation with another local author, Mathangi Subramanian. Discover more about the authors, and The Sky Was Ours below.
Refreshments provided, please RSVP.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Joe Fassler is a writer and editor based in Denver, Colorado. He is an MFA graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and his fiction has appeared in The Boston Review and Electric Literature. In 2013, Fassler started The Atlantic’s “By Heart” series, in which he interviewed authors—including Stephen King, Elizabeth Gilbert, Amy Tan, Khaled Hosseini, Carmen Maria Machado, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and more—about the literature that shaped their lives and work. That led to editing Light the Dark, a book-length collection that included favorites from “By Heart” alongside new contributions. Fassler’s nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Guardian, Longreads, and The Best American Food Writing. Fassler currently teaches writing at Vermont’s Sterling College. The Sky Was Ours is his first novel.
Mathangi Subramanian is an award winning writer and educator Her novel A People's History of Heaven was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and was longlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, among others. Her middle grade book Dear Mrs. Naidu won the South Asia Book Award and her picture book A Butterfly Smile is in the Nobel Museum. Her shorter work has appeared in The Washington Post, Harper's Bazaar, Ms.com, The San Francisco Chronicle, Kweli Journal, and McSweeny's Internet Tendency, among others. She is a guest artist at Denver School of the Arts and a Fulbright-Nehru Senior scholar, and she holds a doctorate in communication and education from Columbia Teachers College.
ABOUT THE SKY WAS OURS
“An immersive fever dream of a novel, beautifully written and boldly imagined.” —Leslie Jamison, New York Times bestselling author of The Empathy Exams
From prizewinning writer Joe Fassler comes a brilliant modern reimagining of the myth of Daedalus and Icarus as a story of obsession, longing, and the radical pursuit of utopia
It’s 2005, and 24-year-old Jane is miserable. Overworked, buried in debt, she senses the life she wanted slipping away—while the world around her veers badly off course, hurtling toward economic and ecological collapse. She wants to find something better. But she has no idea where to start.
In a sudden and unprecedented burst of rebellion, Jane decides to abandon everything she knows, leaving behind her relationships and responsibilities to go on the road. That’s how she meets Barry, a brilliant and charismatic recluse living on an isolated homestead near New York’s Canadian border. For years, in secret, Barry’s chased an unlikely obsession: to build a pair of wings humans can fly in, with designs inspired by an obscure precursor to the Wright Brothers. It’s no mere hobby. He’s convinced his dream of flight will spark a revolution, delivering us from the degradation of modern capitalism and the climate chaos that awaits us.
Jane is captivated by Barry’s radical vision, even as his experiments become more dangerous. But she’s equally drawn to the enigmatic Ike, Barry’s gentle, thoughtful son, who’s known no other reality—and who only wants to keep his father alive, tethered to ground and to reason.
So begins an inventive, dazzlingly beautiful story about the human desire for transcendence—our longing to escape the mundane and glide into a euphoric future. Inspired by the myth of Daedalus and Icarus, The Sky Was Ours is a powerful and imaginative debut that explores the question: If you had access to technology that allowed you to escape the confines of your life, would you use it? And if Barry’s wings really could change the world, would that be freedom?