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[/ezcol_1third] [ezcol_2third_end]Rebecca Makkai discusses her third novel, The Great Believers with author Stephen Kiernan, at Middlebury Marquis Theatre in an event co-sponsored by The Vermont Book Shop, Middlebury Marquis Theatre, and the Pride Center of Vermont.

The Great Believers is a dazzling new tale of friendship and redemption in the face of tragedy and loss during and after the AIDS crisis in 1980’s Chicago. In the New York Times Book Review, to be published in paper on Sunday, June 30, Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours, said The Great Believers is “an absorbing and emotionally riveting story about what it’s like to live during times of crisis. And who among us believes that, at any point in the near future, we’ll cease living in times of crisis, whatever form they may take?” And Becky Dayton, of The Vermont Book Shop, wrote, “it’s a vast fictional landscape of both time and location, but Makkai works magic with themes of art, illicit love, and family bonds to braid it all together into a rich, cohesive, and deeply affecting narrative.”

Rebecca Makkai, a graduate of Bread Loaf School of English, has taught at Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Northwestern University. She is the author of The Borrower, The Hundred-Year House, which won the Novel of the Year Award from the Chicago Writers Association, and Music for Wartime. Her work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, Harper’s, and Tin House, among others. She lives outside Chicago with her husband and two daughters.

Stephen P. Kiernan is the critically acclaimed author of The Hummingbird, The Curiosity, and The Baker’s Secret. He has also written two nonfiction books, Last Rights and Authentic Patriotism. When not in his home of Charlotte, Vermont, he travels the country speaking and consulting on how to expand use of hospice, palliative care and advance directives.

 Producer: MCTV