Wisconsin Book Festival Presents Brandon Taylor for Real Life

Event hosted at A Room of One's Own (315 W. Gorham St.) A novel of startling intimacy violence and mercy among friends in a Midwestern university town from an electric new voice. A novel of rare emotional power that excavates the social intricacies of a late-summer weekend--and a lifetime of buried pain. Almost everything about Wallace an introverted African-American transplant from Alabama is at odds with the lakeside Midwestern university town where he is working toward a biochem degree. For reasons of self-preservation Wallace has enforced a wary distance even within his own circle of friends--some dating each other some dating women some feigning straightness. But a series of confrontations with colleagues and an unexpected encounter with a young straight man conspire to fracture his defenses while revealing hidden currents of resentment and desire that threaten the equilibrium of their community. Real Life is a gut punch of a novel a story that asks if it's ever really possible to overcome our private wounds and buried histories--and at what cost. Brandon Taylor is the senior editor of Electric Literature's Recommended Reading and a staff writer at Literary Hub. He holds graduate degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Iowa where he was an Iowa Arts Fellow at the Iowa Writers� Workshop. A Wisconsin Book Festival event. https://www.wisconsinbookfestival.org/events/real-life