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Join us for a special evening with Shannon Mullen, author of In Other Words, Leadership: How a Young Mother’s Weekly Letters to Her Governor Helped Both Women Brace the First Pandemic Year. Mullen will be in conversation with letter writer and constituent Ashirah Knapp & Governor Janet Mills—moderated by Senator Angus King.

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From acclaimed senior editor at Vanity Fair (and Mechanics’ Hall member!) Keziah Weir, comes an intoxicating debut novel about a young journalist who discovers a short story that’s inexplicably about her life—leading to an entanglement with the author’s widow, daughter, and former best friend.

Sal Cannon’s life is in shambles. Her relationship is crumbling, and her career in journalism hits a low point after it’s revealed that her profile of a playwright is full of inaccuracies. She’s close to rock-bottom when she reads a short story by Martin Keller: a much older author she met at a literary event years ago. Much to her shock, the story is about her and the moment they met. When Sal learns the story is excerpted from his unpublished novel, she reaches out to the story’s editor—only to learn that Martin is deceased. Desperate to leave her crumbling life behind and to read the manuscript from which the story was excerpted, Sal decides to find Martin’s widow, Moira.

Moira has made it clear that she doesn’t want to be contacted. But soon Sal is on a bus to Upstate New York, where she slowly but surely inserts herself into Moira’s life. Or is it the other way around? As Sal sifts through Martin’s papers and learns more about Moira, the question of muse and artist arises—again and again. Even more so when Martin’s daughter’s story emerges. Who owns a story? And who is the one left to tell it?

The Mythmakers is a nesting doll of a book that grapples with perspective and memory, as well as the battles between creative ambition and love. It’s a story about the trials and tribulations of finding out who you are, at any stage in your life, and how inspiration might find you in the strangest of places.

Keziah will be joined in coversation by Lynn Steger Strong, he author of the novels Hold Still, Want, and Flight. Her non-fiction and criticism has appeared in the New York Times, New York Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, the LA Times, the New Republic, and elsewhere.

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