October 3, 2024
We welcomed Jamie Quatro, dubbed by the New Yorker as the “fearless” author of I Want to Show You More and Fire Sermon, in conversation with Sloane Crosley (Grief Is for People, Cult Classic).
Known for her sharp, seductive prose and masterful exploration of the divine and carnal found in everyday life, Quatro presents a striking and formally inventive tale in her latest book, Two-Step Devil. The novel tells the story of the unlikely relationship between two strangers at the margins of society: Prophet, a 70-year-old painter living off the grid in a cabin near the Georgia border, and Michael, a teenage girl he believes is a messenger from God. Two-Step Devil is a propulsive and philosophical examination of fate and faith that dares to ask what salvation, if any, can be found in our modern world.
Featured Book
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Two-Step Devil
By Jamie Quatro
Published by Grove/Atlantic
In 2014, in Lookout Mountain, Alabama, the Prophet—a seventy-year-old man who paints his visions—lives off the grid in a cabin near the Georgia border. While scrounging for materials at the local scrapyard, the Prophet sees a car pull up to an abandoned gas station. In the back seat is a teenage girl with zip ties on her wrists, a girl he realizes he must rescue from her current life. Her name is Michael, and the Prophet feels certain that she is a messenger sent by God to take his end-time warnings to the White House. Michael finds herself in the Prophet’s remote, art-filled cabin, and as their uncertain dynamic evolves into tender friendship, she is offered a surprising opportunity to escape her past—and perhaps change her future.
Moving through the worlds of the Prophet, the girl, and a beguiling devil figure who dances in the corner of their lives, Two-Step Devil is a propulsive, philosophical examination of fate and faith that dares to ask what salvation, if any, can be found in our modern world.
In Conversation
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Jamie Quatro
Jamie Quatro
Jamie Quatro is the New York Times Notable author of I Want to Show You More, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award and the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, and Fire Sermon, a Book of the Year for the Economist, San Francisco Chronicle, LitHub, Bloomberg, and the Times Literary Supplement. Quatro’s fiction has appeared in the New Yorker, the Paris Review, the New York Review of Books, and Ploughshares. She is the recipient of fellowships from MacDowell and Yaddo and teaches in the Sewanee School of Letters MFA program. Quatro lives with her family in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Photo Credit: Stephen Alvarez
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Sloane Crosley
Sloane Crosley
Sloane Crosley is the author of the New York Times bestselling books Grief Is for People, How Did You Get This Number, and I Was Told There’d Be Cake (a 2009 finalist for The Thurber Prize for American Humor). She is also the author of Look Alive Out There (a 2019 finalist for The Thurber Prize for American Humor) and the novels, Cult Classic and The Clasp, both of which have been optioned for film. She served as editor of The Best American Travel Writing series and is featured in The Library of America’s 50 Funniest American Writers, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, Phillip Lopate’s The Contemporary American Essay and others. She was the inaugural columnist for the New York Times Op-Ed “Townies” series, a contributing editor at Interview Magazine, and a columnist for the Village Voice, Vanity Fair, the Independent, Black Book, Departures and the New York Observer. She is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. She has taught at Columbia University and The Yale Writers’ Workshop. She lives in New York City.
Photo Credit: Jennifer Livingston
