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We Were The Universe Book Cover

**CANCELLED**: We Were The Universe

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Community Room 301

We regret to inform you that due to author illness, this event has been cancelled.

A young mother, in denial after the death of her sister, navigates the dizzying landscapes of desire, guilt, and grief in this darkly comic, highly anticipated debut novel from Kimberly King Parsons, author of the story collection, Black Light (longlisted for the National Book Award).

The trip was supposed to be fun. When Kit’s best friend gets dumped by his boyfriend, he begs her to ditch her family responsibilities for an idyllic weekend in the Montana mountains. They’ll soak in hot springs, then sneak a vape into a dive bar and drink too much, like old times. Instead, their getaway only reminds Kit of everything she’s lost lately: her wildness, her independence, and—most heartbreaking of all—her sister, Julie, who died a few years ago.

When she returns to the Dallas suburbs, Kit tries to settle into her routine—long afternoons spent caring for her irrepressible daughter, going on therapist-advised dates with her concerned husband, and reluctantly taking her mother’s phone calls. But in the secret recesses of Kit’s mind, she’s reminiscing about the band she used to be in—and how they’d go out to the desert after shows and drop acid. She’s imagining an impossible threesome with her kid’s pretty gymnastics teacher and the cool playground mom. Keyed into everything that might distract from her surfacing pain, Kit spirals. As her already thin boundaries between reality and fantasy blur, she begins to wonder: Is Julie really gone?

Neon bright in its insight, both devastating and laugh-out-loud funny, We Were the Universe is an ambitious, inventive novel from a revelatory new voice in American fiction—a fearless exploration of sisterhood, motherhood, friendship, marriage, psychedelics, and the many strange, transcendent shapes love can take.

In conversation with Chelsea Bieker.

Kimberly King Parsons

Kimberly King Parsons Author Photo

Born in Lubbock, Texas, Kimberly King Parsons won the 2020 National Magazine Award for fiction. Her debut collection, Black Light (2019), was longlisted for the National Book Award and the Story Prize, and her fiction has been published in The Paris Review. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her partner and children. We Were the Universe is her first novel.

Recent Book
We Were the Universe

Chelsea Bieker

Chelsea Bieker Author Photo

Chelsea Bieker is the author of the debut novel Godshot, which was longlisted for The Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize and named a Barnes & Noble Pick of the Month. Her story collection, Heartbroke won the California Book Award and was a New York Times "Best California Book of 2022.” She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writers' Award, as well as residencies at MacDowell and Tin House. Raised in Hawaii and California, she now lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and two children.

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Madwoman