Rebecca Handler in conversation with Selina Fillinger
The Literary Arts Bookstore is pleased to welcome author Rebecca Handler to celebrate her new novel, In the Round. Handler will be joined in conversation by Selina Fillinger.
About the book:
Have you ever been dead certain that you’re being observed, that maybe your very existence is predicated on how others see you? A few minutes after she’s become convinced she’s the victim of a home invasion, In the Round’s brilliant and intimate narrator plunges us into a feminist Kafkaesque literary mystery that unfolds over the course of one weird—and dare we say, dramatic—night in San Francisco. Nothing is missing from her family’s home, but everything feels wrong. So begins a sleepless night of questioning, and a novel packed with the kind of astonishing twists that leave readers wondering: Is all the world a stage, after all? Over the course of the evening, theatrical elements creep in: a cast list, a prop list, an intermission.
At once an avant-garde thriller, a meditation on motherhood and mortality, a full-throated endorsement of gut-level intuition, and a tribute to the rapture of live theater in a post-pandemic world, In the Round is a lively, inventive, and completely singular story.
Rebecca Handler
Rebecca Handler’s debut novel, Edie Richter is Not Alone, received a Kirkus Starred Review and was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Her short stories have been published and awarded in several anthologies. Rebecca first conceived the idea for In the Round in 2021 while undergoing treatment for breast cancer. During long hours at the UCSF infusion center, often in a semi-hallucinatory state, the story began to take shape. A MacDowell fellow, Rebecca lives in San Francisco with her husband and, when they’re not off pursuing their own adventures, their two daughters.
Selina Fillinger
Selina Fillinger is an internationally produced playwright and screenwriter. Her farce, POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive, garnered three Tony nominations and made her, at twenty-eight, one of the youngest female playwrights ever produced on Broadway. She has developed TV with AMC, Hulu, HBO, and is currently developing a pilot with 20th Television.
