Wed 3/3 @ 6:00PM
Labyrinth Books, 122 Nassau Street

Emily Nemens’s new novel Clutch follows a group of five friends as they navigate the biggest challenges of their lives, asking how much space and heart we can give to our friends and our families, and what space we can save for ourselves.

As undergrads, Gregg, Reba, Hillary, Bella, and Carson formed the kind of rare bond that college brochures promise—friendship that lasts a lifetime. Two decades later, the women are spread across the country but remain firmly tethered through their ever-unfurling group chat. They’ve made it through COVID and childbirth and midcareer challenges, but no one can anticipate what’s coming down the pike. Twenty years into their shared friendship, the stakes are higher than ever, and they must help one another reconcile professional ambition with personal tumult.

Emily Nemens’s debut novel The Cactus League was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and named one of NPR’s and Lit Hub’s favorite books of 2020. Her stories have appeared in BOMB, The Gettysburg Review, n+1, and elsewhere; her illustrations have appeared in The New Yorker and in collaboration with Harvey Pekar. Emily spent over a decade editing literary quarterlies, including leading The Paris Review and serving as co-editor and prose editor of The Southern Review. She held the 2022-23 Picador Professorship (University of Leipzig) and teaches in the MFA program at Bennington College

Jack Livings is the author of a novel, The Blizzard Party, a finalist for the Kirkus Book Prize, and a story collection, The Dog, which received the Rome Prize and the PEN/Bingham Award. His short fiction has appeared in A Public Space, The Paris Review, Best American Short Stories, and Pushcart Prize anthologies. He teaches in the Program in Creative Writing at Princeton.

This event is co-sponsored by the Princeton Public Library and Labyrinth Books.