Author Event! Mona Simpson with Amy Ephron

1113 Montana Avenue,Santa Monica CA 90403

17 May, 2023

Description

We're hosting Mona Simpson as she celebrates her new novel, COMMITMENT! Mona will be joined in conversation by author Amy Ephron. Event format: 30 minute conversation, followed by audience Q&A and book signing About the books: Commitment: When Diane Aziz drives her oldest son, Walter, from Los Angeles to college at UC Berkeley, it will be her last parental act before falling into a deep depression. A single mother who maintains a wishful belief that her children can attain all the things she hasn’t, she’s worked hard to secure their future in caste-driven 1980s Los Angeles, gaining them illegal entry to an affluent public school. When she enters a state hospital, her closest friend tries to keep the children safe and their mother’s dreams for them alive. At Berkeley, Walter discovers a passion for architecture just as he realizes his life as a student may need to end for lack of funds. Back home in LA, his sister, Lina, who works in an ice-cream parlor while her wealthy classmates are preparing for Ivy league schools, wages a high stakes gamble to go there with them. And Donny, the little brother everybody loves, begins to hide in plain sight, coding, gaming, and drifting towards a life on the beach, where he falls into an escalating relationship with drugs. Moving from Berkeley and Los Angeles to New York and back again, this is a story about one family trying to navigate the crisis of their lives, a crisis many know first-hand in their own families or in those of their neighbors. A resonant novel about family and duty and the attendant struggles that come when a parent falls ill, Commitment honors the spirit of fragile, imperfect mothers and the under-chronicled significance of friends, in determining the lives of our children left on their own. The Amazing Baby Name Book: What's in a name? Everything! In this fun, charming, and wonderfully curated collection of baby names, authors Amy Ephron and her daughters, Anna and Maia, share inspired and witty ideas that will spark your imagination, providing parents-to-be with moments of humor, historical context, factual tidbits, and highly opinionated takes on the most creative names from Abacus and Abbie to Zoe and Zuzu! Celebrating inspiration, inclusion, hope, and love—with a little bit of lighthearted attitude thrown in for good measure—this bundle of joy is the perfect gift for you or someone you love. About the authors: Mona Simpson is the author of seven novels: Anywhere But Here, The Lost Father, A Regular Guy, Off Keck Road, My Hollywood, Casebook and Commitment. She’s the recipient of the Mary McCarthy Prize, the Guggenheim and a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The April Atlantic contains one of her stories. She lives in this neighborhood in Santa Monica and is thrilled to finally have a bookstore to which she can walk with her dog, Copperfield. Amy Ephron is a bestselling author, journalist, screenwriter, and producer. She lives in Santa Monica with her husband and any of her children or their children who might stop by.