Rachel Kushner will read from her new novel Creation Lake, followed by an on-stage conversation with Houston-based writer, performer, and educator Christa M. Forster. The evening will conclude with a book sale and signing. The event is presented as part of the 2024/2025 Inprint Margarett Root Brown Reading Series.
Rachel Kushner is, according to George Saunders, “a young master.” Author of the internationally acclaimed novels The Mars Room, The Flamethrowers and Telex from Cuba, as well as a volume of short stories The Strange Case of Rachel K, Kushner’s books have been translated into 26 languages. She has won the French Prix Médicis etranger and has been a finalist for the Booker Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and twice for the National Book Award in Fiction. She is a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow and recipient of the Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Kushner joins us to read from and talk about her new novel, Creation Lake, a spy thriller set in rural France that is equal parts serious art and diversion. According to Hernan Diaz, “Creation Lake reinvents the spy novel in one cool, erudite gesture…Enthralling and sleekly devious, this book is also a lyrical reflection on both the origin and the fate of our species. A novel this brilliant and profound shouldn’t be this much fun.” David Hare says, “By writing in the unillusioned voice of an ex-FBI agent infiltrating a bunch of rural French subversives, Rachel Kushner has cover to say whatever she damn well pleases. And because Kushner has the most bracing intelligence in American fiction, she rips the skin off what many of us like to think we believe.” In a starred review, Publishers Weekly calls it a “scintillating story of activism and espionage…. Readers will be captivated.”
Christa M. Forster is a writer, performer, and educator originally from Southern California. She earned her MFA at the University of Houston. In 2023, her interdisciplinary one-woman show Californio premiered at the National Women’s Theatre Festival in North Carolina, garnering the Audience Choice Award and earning Forster the Most Valuable Producer award. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Sculpture Magazine, Cite Magazine, and various journals and anthologies. She teaches at a private prep school in Houston.
