November has been a kickass month of author events, thanks to several amazing indie bookstores. THIS is the stuff you can’t get from that giant online retailer. THIS is why we need local bookstores!!!

On 11/6, I heard Carmen Maria Machado in conversation with Kelly Link at the Brattle Theatre, discussing Carmen’s new memoir In The Dream House, courtesy of Harvard Book Store.

On 11/8, I laughed with Lindy West about her new book The Witches Are Coming at the First Parish Church in Cambridge, also courtesy of Harvard Book Store.

On 11/18, I listened to Ta-Nehisi Coates talk about his debut novel The Water Dancer with Meghna Chakrabarti at the Chevalier Theatre, courtesy of Brookline Booksmith.

On 11/20, I celebrated Nina MacLaughlin‘s fiction debut Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung at Harvard Book Store.

And on 11/22, I enjoyed Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne and Kelly J. Ford in conversation about Elizabeth’s debut novel Holding On To Nothing at Newtonville Books.

Seriously, what a great month. Thank you to the independent bookstores who made this possible! Remember these places when you start your holiday shopping in the next few weeks.

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Carmen Maria Machado is the author of the memoir In the Dream House and the short story collection Her Body and Other Parties, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and the winner of the Bard Fiction Prize, the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, the Brooklyn Public Library Literature Prize, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize. Machado’s essays, fiction, and criticism have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Granta, Harper’s Bazaar, Tin House, VQR, Conjunctions, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, The Believer, Guernica, Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, Best American Nonrequired Reading, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the Guggenheim Foundation, Michener-Copernicus Foundation, Elizabeth George Foundation, CINTAS Foundation, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. Machado is the Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania and lives in Philadelphia with her wife.

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