CHAT with John Kenney
”I See You’ve Called in Dead”
Wednesday, March 11
6pm, Online through Zoom
Obituary writer Bud Stanley isn’t really living his best life. He’s fallen into a funk after a divorce. (She left him for another man, who, in fairness, was far more interesting.) He’s not doing his job well. He’s given up on dating. And he’s about to be fired for accidentally publishing his own obituary one mildly drunken night (though technically the company can’t legally fire a dead person).
As Bud awaits his fate at work, he does the only logical thing: He goes to the wakes and funerals of total strangers to learn how to live again.
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INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER
A 2025 NPR “Books We Love” Pick
USA Today April Pick
“Razor-sharp, darkly comedic, and emotionally piercing. With the satirical bite of Richard Russo’s Straight Man, the introspection of Fredrik Backman’s A Man Called Ove, and the reinvention of Andrew Sean Greer's Less, Kenney’s vivid prose transforms the mundane into unexpected hilarity.”
—Booklist (starred review)
An Indie Next & LibraryReads Pick
Winner of the AudioFiles Earphones Award
The Office meets Six Feet Under meets About a Boy in this coming-of-middle-age tale about having a second chance to write your life’s story.
John Kenney is the New York Times bestselling author of Love Poems for Married People and the novels Talk to Me and Truth in Advertising, which won the Thurber Prize for American Humor. He is a longtime contributor to The New Yorker and lives in Larchmont, New York.
Castle Hill Author Talk (CHAT)
Join us for a series of provocative and entertaining discussions with some of today’s most talented and creative authors. In a series of live, one-hour events, host Karen Dukess, author of The Last Book Party, will interview acclaimed, debut, and award-winning authors of fiction and non-fiction about their new books and their paths to publication. Available individually or as a series, the interviews will include time for questions from the audience. Events are FREE although donations greatly appreciated!
About the Host:
Karen Dukess, who has hosted the Castle Hill Author Talks since 2021, is the author of the IndieNext and Barnes & Noble Discover New Writers pick THE LAST BOOK PARTY and WELCOME TO MURDER WEEK. She has been a newspaper reporter in Florida, a magazine publisher in Russia, and a speechwriter on gender equality for the United Nations. She has a degree in Russian Studies from Brown University and a Master's in Journalism from Columbia University. She lives with her family near New York City and spends as much time as possible in Truro on Cape Cod.