Parnassus Books is thrilled to present Elizabeth McCracken in conversation with Ann Patchett.
Bowlaway is a sweeping, beguiling story of three generations of an American family and one hundred years of a small New England town, all centered around a candlepin bowling alley that is handed down from one generation to the next. Humorous and poignant in equal measure, and imbued with a sense of the magical, Bowlaway traverses the world wars, and the rise and fall of small-town America, showing how pastimes like bowling became an integral part of our social fabric. And it all begins with an unusual, inimitable woman, the original owner of the bowling alley, named Bertha Truitt, who is one of the most stirring characters you’ll ever encounter.
Elizabeth McCracken, twice nominated for the National Book Award, is the author of six books: Here’s Your Hat What’s Your Hurry, The Giant’s House, Niagara Falls All Over Again, An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, Thunderstruck & Other Stories, and Bowlaway. She’s received grants and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Liguria Study Center, the American Academy in Berlin, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Thunderstruck & Other Stories won the 2015 Story Prize. She has taught creative writing at Western Michigan University, the University of Oregon, the University of Houston, and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She holds the James A. Michener Chair in Fiction at the University of Texas, Austin, and boy are her arms tired.
