07.21.2026
Join us as Pulitzer Prize winning author Jayne Anne Phillips and award-winning novelist, Jessica Brilliant Keener read from their new books and discussed writing, memory, and the power of ritual.
Small Town Girls is Jayne Anne Phillips’ ninth book and first nonfiction title–a memoir in essays–in which she reflects on her origins and the mysteries of memory. In her singular first-person voice, she brings us into her childhood and family, most movingly her closeness with her mother. She recreates the place she calls home, its foundational truths and the densely woven ties among the women of the town, and offers insights into the fellow writers and touchstones that moved and influenced her. Phillips writes of her relationships with inspiration, spirituality, culture, and the troubled annals of the last American centuries. Small Town Girls was Oprah’s #1 anticipated new book and is a Boston Globe bestseller
Jessica Brilliant Keener’s third novel and fifth book, Evening Begins the Day, interweaves the stories of two families in crisis–one dealing with marital infidelity, the other with an at-risk teenage daughter–with the ancient Jewish spiritual ritual called the Counting of the Omer. Told from multiple points of view, this multigenerational tale addresses intimate struggles with betrayal, anger, and shame and asks the question: can we heal from love’s deepest wounds? The novel follows a trajectory from isolation and despair to community and hope. Praised as “restrained and powerful” by the Jewish Book Council.
About the Speaker
Born and raised in West Virginia, Jayne Anne Phillips, at 26, published Black Tickets, a first book of stories that influenced a generation of writers and won the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction. Her first novel, Machine Dreams, was a finalist for the NBCC and was chosen one of twelve Best Books of the Year by the New York Times. A second book, Fast Lanes, a tour de force collection of stories told entirely in first person voices, preceded Shelter, in which the child characters, two sets of sisters and the young son of the camp cook, grapple with their parent’s secrets and their own intuitions, is set in a 60’s era Girl Guides camp deep in a forest primeval. MotherKind follows Kate through the first year of her infant son’s life and the last year she shares with her terminally ill mother. Lark and Termite, finalist for the National Book Award, the NBCC Award, and the Prix de Medici Etrangers (France), traces the magical connection between a soldier caught up in the Korean War, the disabled son he will never know, and Lark, a young girl who believes her brother Termite is deeply conscious of more than he appears to understand. Quiet Dell (a Publisher’s Weekly and WSJ Fiction of the Year), is a portrait of Depression-era America that follows the real-life saga of a 1931 serial murderer who used matrimonial agencies to seduce wealthy widows, but takes as its heroines the three children of an Illinois widow and the female reporter who won’t stop looking for them. Night Watch, awarded the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, follows a mother and daughter seeking refuge in the apocalyptic, post-Civil War years in mountainous West Virginia. Small Town Girls, ‘a writer’s memoir’, the author’s first nonfiction book, was published to acclaim in 2026. The recipient of Guggenheim, Howard, NEA, and Rockefeller Fellowships, is a member of the National Academy of Arts and Letters.
Jessica Brilliant Keener‘s novel, Strangers in Budapest, (Algonquin, 2017) was an Indie Next pick, chosen as a “best new novel” by Entertainment Weekly, Real Simple, Chicago Magazine, and landed on the Southern Independent Bookstore Assn. bestseller list. Her debut novel, Night Swim, was a national bestseller and called “moving” by the New York Times followed by her collection of award-winning stories, Women In Bed, praised by Publishers Weekly for its “ability to deliver as much exquisite detail as the stories’ brevity will allow.” National Book Circle Critics award winner, Edith Pearlman, lauded the collection by describing Keener as “a master of immediacy.” Keener’s fiction has been recognized in The Pushcart Prize under “Outstanding Writers.” She is the recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist’s Grant, creative writing scholarships from Wesleyan University, Brown University, and multiple fellowships awarded by the Virginia Center for Creative Arts as well as a fellowship in Women’s Leadership from the Omega Institute in NY. Her feature articles (more than 100) have appeared in The Boston Globe; O, The Oprah Magazine, WBUR’s Cognoscenti, Lilith, Design New England, Writer’s Digest, and the award-winning anthology, Alone Together, Love, Grief, and Comfort in the time of Covid-19, winner of the Washington State Book Award. The Jewish Women’s Archive, The Jewish Community Voice, and The Presbyterian Outlook have included Evening Begins the Day on their 2026 Summer Books lists.