Performing & Visual Arts
Meet Bestselling Author Lauren Groff with R.O Kwon
Join us for a very special evening...
Bookshop West Portal is delighted to welcome author Lauren Groff live and in person. Lauren Groff is the author of The Monsters of Templeton, Arcadia, Fates and Furies, Matrix, and The Vaster Wilds.
Bookshop West Portal has long been a fan of Lauren Groff, since Monsters of Templeton, through her following bestsellers, Matrix, Fates and Furies, The Vaster Wilds, and beyond. We are delighted to welcome the New York Times bestselling author back to San Francisco for a riveting evening of conversation with R.O. Kwan. Please get your ticket to join us at the United Irish Cultural Center to celebrate Lauren Groff’s latest stunning collection of short stories, Brawler.
This event will take place at San Francisco's United Irish Cultural Center at 2700 45th Ave.
SCHEDULE
There is no assigned seating, so arrive promptly to purchase any books, grab a drink, and get your seats.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Lauren Groff delivers a gorgeous collection about families transformed by desperate circumstances. In the spectacular opener, "The Wind," a mother and her three children flee from her abusive husband after her 12-year-old daughter takes a blow meant for her. On the road, with the husband in pursuit, the daughter takes drastic action to save the family. "To Sunland" follows Joanie, a young woman who moves her intellectually disabled older brother into a group home following the death of their mother. In the title entry, teen Sara excels on her school's diving team but has little control over her mother's increasingly dangerous disordered eating. In "What's the Time, Mr. Wolf?" a young man whose family has nurtured his sense of entitlement, whether by giving him a car despite falling short of his expected SAT score or buying his way into a top college, faces the limits of nepotism when his uncle and grandfather fire him from the family banking business because of his heavy drinking and poor performance. Throughout, Groff sketches her characters with scalpel-like precision (Sara's malnourished mother is "a skin bag with chalk in it, far too light to be human"). Each of these heartbreaking tales will linger in the reader's mind.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lauren Groff is a three-time National Book Award finalist and The New York Times–bestselling author of the novels The Monsters of Templeton, Arcadia, Fates and Furies, Matrix, and The Vaster Wilds, and the celebrated short story collections Delicate Edible Birds and Florida. She has won The Story Prize, the ABA Indies’ Choice Award, France’s Grand Prix de l’Héroïne, and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her work regularly appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and elsewhere. Her work has been translated into thirty-six languages. She lives in Gainesville, Florida, where she and her husband own the independent bookstore The Lynx.
ABOUT R.O. KWON
R. O. Kwon is the author of the nationally bestselling novel Exhibit and a recipient of the Lambda Literary Duggins Prize. Kwon’s bestselling first novel, The Incendiaries, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award and the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Prize. With Garth Greenwell, Kwon co-edited the bestselling Kink. Kwon’s books have been translated into seven languages and named a best book of the year by over forty publications. Kwon’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The Guardian, and elsewhere. She is a 2025-2026 Visiting Fellow at the American Library in Paris. Kwon was the Stein Visiting Writer at Stanford University and the Mary Routt Chair of Writing at Scripps College, and has taught at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Tin House Workshop, the University of San Francisco, and the Writer’s Center. Born in Seoul, Kwon has lived most of her life in the United States.
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