Loading…
This event has ended. Visit the official site or create your own event on Sched.
Back To Schedule
Saturday, October 28 • 2:00pm - 3:00pm
Fiction: The Naughty Bits

Sign up or log in to save this to your schedule, view media, leave feedback and see who's attending!

Feedback form is now closed.
Writing about sex in fiction is notoriously difficult; the UK’s Literary Review even acknowledges this conundrum with their annual Bad Sex in Fiction Award (which, for the record, is the one prize we’re sure none of this year’s BBF authors will win!). But what happens when novelists use sex not just to titillate, but as a jumping-off point to explore issues of gender, freedom, creativity, coming of age, or (gasp) love? Three accomplished novelists will discuss their latest work in a session that’s definitely rated PG-13. Local favorite Tom Perrotta (now a bona fide celebrity thanks to the success of The Leftovers on HBO) pens what’s been called a “coming of middle age” novel with Mrs. Fletcher, about an empty-nester whose online sexual awakening plays out in parallel with her college-aged son’s sexual frustrations. In Made for Love, Alissa Nutting traverses questions of intimacy and definitions of deviance in a quasi-absurdist novel that explores the needs of mind, body, and heart and that the New Yorker calls “a total joyride, dizzying and surprising.” And Daniel Handler, in a novel aptly titled All the Dirty Parts, employs the unapologetically raunchy musings of a sex-crazed high school boy to consider the nature of consent, the fluidity of sexual identity, and the development of empathy. No need to dog-ear the steamy passages here—you won’t want to miss a page of these novels, or a moment of the discussion, moderated by romance novelist and author most recently of Wilde in Love Eloisa James, the nom de plume of Fordham University English professor Mary Bly.

Moderators
avatar for Eloisa James

Eloisa James

Eloisa James (the nom de plume of Mary Bly) has a successful dual career as a Shakespearean scholar and a best-selling romance novelist. As Mary Bly, she is a literature professor at Fordham University and teaches courses in Shakespeare and early modern English theater. As Eloisa... Read More →

Presenters
avatar for Daniel Handler

Daniel Handler

Daniel Handler is a man of many collaborations. He has worked with celebrated artist and illustrator Maira Kalman on a number of picture books, such as Weather, Weather and Girls Standing on Lawns. Their young adult novel, Why We Broke Up, was named a 2012 Printz Honor Book, a School... Read More →
avatar for Alissa Nutting

Alissa Nutting

Alissa Nutting has emerged as a provocative new voice in American literature. Her story collection, Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls (2010), won the Starcherone Prize for Innovative Fiction. Her debut novel, Tampa (2013) unflinchingly told the story of a twenty-six-year-old middle... Read More →
avatar for Tom Perrotta

Tom Perrotta

Novelist and screenwriter Tom Perrotta was born in New Jersey and grew up playing baseball and football. He holds a BA from Yale University and an MFA from Syracuse University. He published his first book, the short story collection Bad Haircut: Stories of the Seventies, in 1994... Read More →


Saturday October 28, 2017 2:00pm - 3:00pm EDT
Emmanuel Sanctuary