Writers at the Wrecking Bar Presents Kristen Roupenian | You Know You Want This

Writers at the Wrecking Bar Presents Kristen Roupenian | You Know You Want This

Tuesday, Jan 22, 2019 7:00 PM

Location:
Wrecking Bar Brewpub
292 Moreland Ave, Atlanta, GA 30307

The author of the hit New Yorker story “Cat Person”—“the short story that launched a thousand theories” (The Guardian)—Kristen Roupenian brings her highly anticipated debut to Atlanta.

"You Know You Want This" is a compulsively readable collection of short stories that explore the complex—and often darkly funny—connections between gender, sex, and power across genres. We cannot think of a better addition to an already stellar list of literary phenoms who have been a part of our Writers at the Wrecking Bar series.

Roupenian will be interviewed by Alison Law, host of the Literary Atlanta podcast.

Musical guest Kim Ware of the Good Graces will open the evening with a live set at 7 p.m.

About the Book

"You Know You Want This" brilliantly explores the ways in which women are horrifying as much as it captures the horrors that are done to them. Among its pages are a couple who becomes obsessed with their friend hearing them have sex, then seeing them have sex…until they can’t have sex without him; a ten-year-old whose birthday party takes a sinister turn when she wishes for “something mean”; a woman who finds a book of spells half hidden at the library and summons her heart’s desire: a nameless, naked man; and a self-proclaimed “biter” who dreams of sneaking up behind and sinking her teeth into a green-eyed, long-haired, pink-cheeked coworker.

Spanning a range of genres and topics—from the mundane to the murderous and supernatural—these are stories about sex and punishment, guilt and anger, the pleasure and terror of inflicting and experiencing pain. These stories fascinate and repel, revolt and arouse, scare and delight in equal measure. And, as a collection, they point a finger at you, daring you to feel uncomfortable—or worse, understood—as if to say, “You want this, right? You know you want this.”

If you are unable to attend this event, you may pre-order a signed copy below.

About the Author

Kristen Roupenian graduated from Barnard College and holds a Ph.D. in English from Harvard, as well as an MFA from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan. She is the author of the short story, “Cat Person,” which was published in The New Yorker and selected by Sheila Heti for The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2018. She is currently at work on a novel.