February 4, 2025
We welcomed National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist Adam Haslett, author of Imagine Me Gone, to celebrate his latest book, Mothers and Sons, a gripping story of family, forgiveness, and the lasting impact of a fleeting moment. He was joined in conversation by Pulitzer Prize finalist Adam Rapp (Red Light Winter).
Dubbed “one of the country’s most talented writers” by the Wall Street Journal, Haslett has a gift for capturing the complexities of familial relationships, as demonstrated in Imagine Me Gone and You Are Not a Stranger Here. In Mothers and Sons, he tells the story of the estranged relationship between Peter, an asylum lawyer in New York City, and his mother, Ann. When Peter takes on a case about a young gay man, he is forced to confront the night of violence that changed his life, and the secret which tore him and his mother apart. With remarkable emotional depth, Haslett portrays the harrowing search for one’s humanity, and the lengths taken to maintain it..
Featured Book
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Mothers and Sons
By Adam Haslett
Published by Little, Brown and Company
At forty, Peter, an asylum lawyer in New York City, is overworked and isolated. He spends his days immersed in the struggles of immigrants only to return to an empty apartment and occasional hook-ups with a man who wants more than Peter can give. But when the asylum case of a young gay man pierces Peter’s numbness, the event that he has avoided for twenty years returns to haunt him.
Ann, his mother, who runs a women’s retreat center she founded after leaving his father, is hurt by the estrangement from Peter but cherishes the world she has built. She long ago put behind her the decision that divided her from her son. But as Peter’s case plunges him further into the fraught memory of his first love and the night of violence that changed his life, he and his mother must confront the secret that tore them apart.
With unsurpassed emotional depth, Mothers and Sons reveals all that is lost by looking away from the past and the love that might be restored by facing it. In his spellbinding new novel, Adam Haslett demonstrates yet again his mastery of “a rich assortment of literary gifts” (New York Times).
In Conversation
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Adam Haslett
Adam Haslett
Adam Haslett is the author of the story collection You Are Not a Stranger Here and the novels Union Atlantic and Imagine Me Gone. He has twice been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, as well as a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award and a winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the PEN/Malamud Award, the Berlin Prize, and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He currently directs the MFA Program at Hunter College in New York.
Photo Credit: Beowulf Sheehan
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Adam Rapp
Adam Rapp
An acclaimed filmmaker and playwright, Adam Rapp was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his play Red Light Winter and is the recipient of the Benjamin H. Danks Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, among other honors. In addition to his numerous plays, he is the author of the novels Know Your Beholder and The Year of Endless Sorrows and several YA novels, including Under the Wolf, Under the Dog, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Born in Chicago and raised in nearby Joliet, Illinois, Rapp now splits his time between New York City’s East Village and upstate New York.
Photo Credit: Sham Hinchey
