Wednesday, May 2, 2012 at 6:00 PM
Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh – Main (Oakland)
4400 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15213

Good friends and novelists Stewart O’Nan and Jane McCafferty appear together for Writers LIVE with their latest novels.

Stewart O’Nan, a Pittsburgher and self-proclaimed Pirates fan, is a nationally acclaimed author who has built a following all over the country for novels like Emily Alone and Last Night at the Lobster. Kirkus Reviews calls his latest novella The Odds “a valentine to marriage as it is actually lived in troubled times.”  The Odds follows the Fowlers to Niagara Falls on their second honeymoon where they bet their remaining life savings in hopes of saving everything else – even their crumbling marriage.  Stewart O’Nan is author of 14 novels, a screenplay, and two works of nonfiction. He says he got his first big break as a writer when he won the 1993 Drue Heinz Literature Prize for his collection of short stories, In the Walled City.

Jane McCafferty is author of the new novel First You Try Everything, and a Professor of Creative Writing at Carnegie Mellon University. Set in present-day Pittsburgh, her latest novel is about the unraveling of the marriage of Ben and Evvie Muldoone and the agonizing process of divorce. The Oprah Magazine blog, O, says that First You Try Everything is “a life-stopping novel by Jane McCafferty, a crackerjack of a writer…”. Jane McCafferty won the 1992 Drue Heinz Literature Prize for her collection of short fiction, Director of the World.

A book signing follows the program, with copies of First You Try Everything and The Odds available from the Penguin Bookshop.

For more information, contact Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures at 412-622-8866, email info@pittsburghlectures.org, or visit www.pittsburghlectures.org.

Related story at the Post-Gazette:

Authors Stewart O’Nan and Jane McCafferty tackle love and marriage

In the category of calculated risks, marriage is undoubtedly the ultimate gamble.

Art and Marion Fowler, a Cleveland couple verging on bankruptcy, roll their wedded dice one last time by returning to Niagara Falls, where they honeymooned 30 years ago. Their story unfolds in Stewart O’Nan’s 14th novel, “The Odds.”

Mr. O’Nan, who lives in Edgewood, will read from “The Odds” on Wednesday at the main Carnegie Library branch in Oakland. Joining him for the reading and a conversation will be his colleague, Carnegie Mellon University English professor Jane McCafferty. She will read from her novel “First You Try Everything,” which was published this year by HarperCollins. [See review of both books from the Jan. 29 Post-Gazette.]

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