Jessica Handler and Rebecca McClanahan in Conversation

Writers and teachers Jessica Handler and Rebecca McClanahan discuss the sticky topic of writing about mothers (and daughters), mothers as daughters, and mothers as people in fiction and nonfiction. Jessica's forthcoming novel, The World to See, deals with these relationships and more connections between women—friendships, business partners, lovers. She is the author of The Magnetic Girl and others. Rebecca McClanahan's memoir Light Falls on Everything: A Daughter's Memoir of Caregiving, Grief, and Possibility delves into her role as caretaker for her parents in their elder years and how that experience shaped her reflections on love and loss. McClanahan is the author of eleven previous books.

This is a free event. Get a 10% discount on the book when you RSVP on Eventbrite and present it at the bookshop register.

RSVP

About the Books

The World to See: A Novel

"Handler brings her trademark scything gaze and compassionate understanding of human nature to this vivid tale of two women navigating their relationships with their mothers, their entwined histories, and their music." —Joshilyn Jackson, New York Times bestselling author of Never Have I Ever and With My Little Eye

When teenager Nadine Harvey helps her best friend hide a disturbing secret, she’ s also concealing her own deepest truth: she’ ll do almost anything to be wanted. Five years and three thousand miles later, Nadine is thrilled when her idol, Celeste— a rock singer known as “ the oracle” — befriends her. As Celeste’ s career begins to falter, she launches a bold program encouraging women to speak their truths. Nadine eagerly becomes her business partner, but as their ambitions clash, their alliance starts to unravel. Determined to hide their growing rift, Celeste and Nadine invite their mothers to a high-profile awards gala. When painful histories resurface, each woman must confront how she sees herself— and how the world sees her.

Light Falls on Everything: A Daughter's Memoir of Caregiving, Grief, and Possibility

My father’s heart, and my mother’s, can still break. In this most essential way, they are still themselves. They are still here.

To stay together until the end was the deepest wish of Rebecca McClanahan’s elderly, frail parents. So when the two of them could no longer care for themselves, Rebecca and her siblings moved them from Indiana to North Carolina, where she and her husband assumed the roles of “first responders” with support from the extended family. Over the course of her parents' final years, Rebecca discovers that the landscape of dementia isn’t entirely bleak if we can hold on long enough to rediscover in our loved ones the essential selves we feared were lost.

Light Falls on Everything takes us inside the intimate rooms of long-term caregiving, where exhaustion, confusion, heartbreak, and grief can shadow the most ordinary days. Still, light flickers in even the darkest corners, revealing moments of tenderness, laughter, absurdity, surprise, and unrelenting love. Emotionally gripping and unstintingly honest, this memoir invites us to reflect on the timeless nature of love and loss and, with it, the unexpected lessons of caregiving: how to move forward into our own uncertain futures, accept grief as a longtime companion, and approach death with some measure of grace.

About Jessica Handler

Jessica Handler is the acclaimed author of Invisible Sisters, Braving the Fire: A Guide to Writing About Grief and Loss, and the award-winning novel The Magnetic Girl. She has written features for NPR, in Tin House, Electric Literature, The Bitter Southerner, The Washington Post, and elsewhere.

About Rebecca McClanahan

Rebecca McClanahan’s work has appeared in Best American Essays, Best American Poetry, and in numerous anthologies. Her most recent book is Light Falls on Everything: A Daughter’s Memoir of Caregiving, Grief, and Possibility. Recipient of two Pushcart prizes, the Glasgow Award in Nonfiction, and other awards, McClanahan teaches in the MFA program of Queens University, Charlotte.