At long last I can finally announce my US “mini-tour” plans – “mini” because it is indeed very wee, but “tour” because it requires way more travel than the average book tour to pull it off. Though returning to my old stomping grounds in Boston, Massachusetts from my new home here in Spain gets more complicated (and expensive) every year, it has always been my dream to launch Lightborne in the same city where it first leaped onto the page – albeit in a very different form than now.
It’s been over ten years since that first version came about, but finally, this October, I’ll be making a few stops around the Boston area to celebrate Lightborne’s US birthday:
October 22, 2024: “Craft on Draft” at Trident Booksellers, Newbury St. Boston, MA at 7pm – 9pm.
From the organizers: “Craft on Draft is a reading series created and managed by alumni of GrubStreet Boston’s Novel Incubator program devoted to great fiction and the mechanics behind it. This session’s topic: ‘Whose History?’ asks, can historical fiction radicalize and revolutionize? Come hear four authors discuss how they’re working to change mainstream perceptions of historical fiction by broadening the genre to include queer folx, non-white/non-Occidental people, even the ‘ordinary,’ non-aristocratic, outsiders, boundary pushers, changemakers… Spend an evening discussing stories that go beyond dead kings and queens to hash out what’s at stake in our reimagining of the past.
With Hesse Phillips (Lightborne), Henriette Lazaridis (Last Days in Plaka), Therese Soukar Chehade (We Walked On), and Janet Rich Edwards (Canticle). Moderated by Carla Miriam Levy.”
Free and open to all, but please do register.
October 23, 2024: Lightborne Official US Launch at Porter Square Books: Hesse Phillips in Conversation with Michelle Hoover, Massachusetts Ave. Cambridge, MA at 7pm – 8pm.
From the time Lightborne was still a sprawling mess of loosely connected, overly ambitious ideas, I’d always dreamed of one day having a launch at Porter Square Books’ Cambridge location, just down Spring Hill from my old apartment in Somerville. They’ll be in brand new quarters by the time I finally get to do it, but no matter – we’re still in for a great evening in one of the most vibrant independent bookstores in the Boston area. With lively discussion led by Michelle Hoover, host of The 7AM Novelist Podcast, founder and instructor of the Novel Incubator Program at GrubStreet Boston (where Lightborne was born) and author of Bottomland and The Quickening; along with a reading (or two) performed by yours truly.
Free for all to attend, but please register here to help out our hosts!
Before I jet back across the Atlantic, I’ll also be stopping in at all my old favorite book shops to load up on probably more books than luggage weight restrictions will allow, and to leave a trail of signed copies in my wake. You’ll soon be able to pick one up at Porter Square Books’ locations in Cambridge or Boston, The Harvard/MIT COOP, Trident Booksellers, All She Wrote Books, or the Harvard Book Store.
This post will be updated with further information as it becomes available, so do check back. I hope some of you out there can join me on what will be an incredibly special trip – a return to the city I still often think of as home, even from the other side of the world, and a chance to see friends new and old, some for the first time in years.
HESSE PHILLIPS 