Laura Zigman — The Author Weekend
Laura Zigman reads from her satirical novel about colliding egos at a writers' retreat, where literary ambition meets social catastrophe, at Politics and Prose.
Why we picked this
Zigman has always written with wry precision about the social worlds she knows well — a satire set inside the literary-industrial complex has the ring of someone with receipts.
Laura Zigman reads from The Author Weekend, her new novel described as The Devil Wears Prada meets The White Lotus — a collision of ego, ambition, and betrayal set at a writers’ retreat. Zigman, author of the beloved Animal Husbandry, brings her signature sardonic wit to the world she knows from the inside: publishing, literary culture, and the social theater that surrounds the serious business of making books.
The premise brings together a group of authors at a weekend retreat where professional courtesies quickly dissolve into something considerably less decorous. Zigman is a sharply observant novelist who has made a career of finding the comedy in ambition and self-delusion, and she has rarely had richer material.
The event is free and open to the public at Politics and Prose, 5015 Connecticut Avenue NW, Washington DC.