Matthew Quick, bestselling author of The Silver Linings Playbook, discusses his recently published memoir Dad, Love, Me with Amy Jo Burns. Written in the form of a letter to his ailing father, this memoir explores the complicated burden of caring for an abusive parent who is dying.

Matthew Quick seemed to have it all—a loving wife, a thriving career as a novelist, and a beautiful home. He’d traveled all over the world advocating for mental health awareness, standing before crowds as a success story. But secretly, he was depressed, and some days he didn’t want to live. Years earlier, when he first told his father he wanted to be a novelist, the response was immediate and brutal: “Idiot!” That angry and belittling voice would echo through Quick’s mind for years. He channeled his pain into his debut novel The Silver Linings Playbook, crafting a complex father-son dynamic drawn from his own life. The book became a New York Times bestseller and was adapted into an Oscar-winning film. Still, the approval Quick longed for never came. The deeper the rift between Quick and his father grew, the deeper Quick sank into anxiety and addiction. A health scare forces Quick to get sober, but just as he is putting himself back together, his father is diagnosed with dementia. As his father slips further away, Quick races to make a healing connection. Dad, Love, Me is a beautifully brave and life-affirming memoir and a raw, vulnerable, and deeply moving account of what it means to forgive.

Matthew Quick is the New York Times bestselling author of The Silver Linings Playbook and eight other novels, including We Are the Light, a main selection of the Book of the Month Club. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages, received a PEN/Hemingway Award Honorable Mention, was an Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, a #1 bestseller in Brazil, and selected by Nancy Pearl as one of Summer’s Best Books for NPR.

Amy Jo Burns is a frequent presence at Princeton Public Library literary events. Her new novel, Wait for Me is the Today Show Read With Jenna pick for March 2026. She is the author of three other books, including Cinderland, Shiner, and Mercury, which was a Barnes & Noble Book Club Pick, a People Magazine Book of the Week, and an Editor’s Choice selection in The New York Times.

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