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What a Time to Be Alive: Jade Chang in conversation with Genevieve Hudson

Thu, October 9 from 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm PDT
716 SE Grand Ave Portland, OR 97214

Join us in celebrating Jade Chang’s latest novel, What a Time to Be Alive


About the book: 

A deeply moving and often hilarious novel following a woman who becomes an internet folk hero in the most unexpected way, catapulting her into fame and influence just as she’s finally beginning to reckon with her complicated past

Lola Treasure Gold can’t figure out her life. She’s broke, unemployed, and back in her childhood home, a crumbling cottage in the Hollywood Hills. Worse—unspeakably worse—one of her closest friends has just died. So nobody is more surprised than Lola when a jackpot falls in her lap: she stars in a viral video, opening a surprising path for her to become a self-help guru.

With the encouragement of her other best friend, Celi—still alive, thank god—Lola embraces the public interest in her perceived message. But is she a scammer or a sage? Just as Lola is telling others to be their own guiding lights, she can’t seem to find hers: she’s grieving; she’s accused of using the notoriety of her friend’s death to fuel her rise; and she’s full of questions about the fate of her mother, who came to America pregnant, fleeing China’s one-child policy, got deported when Lola was eight, and now has totally disappeared.

Driven by an exuberant, searching spirit, Jade Chang’s kaleidoscopic new novel is a deep examination of the ways we commodify belief, the power and precarity of fame, and the delicious terror of being truly seen. What a Time to Be Alive asks if we can look honestly at the world and still love it; the answer is a brilliant, resounding yes.

Jade Chang

Jade Chang

Jade Chang’s debut novel, The Wangs vs. the World, won the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award and has been published in a dozen countries. Her journalism and essays have recently appeared in The Best American Food Writing, and in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times magazines. She also writes for film and TV. She lives in Los Angeles. What a Time to Be Alive is out in Fall 2026 from Ecco.

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Genevieve Hudson

Genevieve Hudson

Genevieve Hudson is the author of Boys of Alabama, which was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award and shortlisted for the Stonewall Book Award, and the story collection Pretend We Live Here, which was a Lambda Literary Award finalist. Their second novel, Headfirst, is forthcoming with Roxane Gay Books. Hudson's work has appeared in Elle, Oprah Magazine, McSweeney’s, BOMB, Bookforum, and Electric Literature among other places. They have received fellowships from the Fulbright Program, MacDowell, Caldera Arts, the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, and the Vermont Studio Center.
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