Wednesday, November 4 at 7:00 p.m. – Emily St. John Mandel – Exit Party
Twenty-seven seasons in, Talking Volumes — presented by MPR News and the Minnesota Star Tribune — remains one of the region’s most anticipated literary event series. This fall, five bestselling authors sit down with award-winning journalists Kerri Miller and Catharine Richert for deep conversations about their books, their lives, and the ideas shaping our world. And we’ll do it all in a welcoming new home: The O’Shaughnessy Auditorium at St. Catherine University.
Join Talking Volumes for a riveting evening with Emily St. John Mandel, the acclaimed author of Station Eleven and Sea of Tranquility, as she discusses Exit Party, her dazzling new novel of doubles, fractured timelines, and lives transformed by a single uncanny night. Set in a near-future Los Angeles emerging from collapse, the story begins at a glittering party where reality suddenly slips: a host disappears, a stranger appears, and nothing feels certain again. With her signature blend of literary elegance, suspense, and speculative imagination, Mandel delivers a mind-bending story of art, survival, freedom, and the hidden forces shaping our world. Don’t miss the chance to hear one of today’s most celebrated novelists in conversation at The O’Shaughnessy Auditorium for what promises to be one of the season’s most thought-provoking and unforgettable events.
About the Author
EMILY ST. JOHN MANDEL is the author of six novels, most recently Sea of Tranquility, which has been translated into 25 languages and was selected by President Barack Obama as one of his favorite books of 2022. Her previous novels include The Glass Hotel, which was also on Obama’s list, was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and has been translated into 26 languages; and Station Eleven, which was a finalist for a National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, won the 2015 Arthur C. Clarke Award among other honors, has been translated into 36 languages, and aired as a limited series on HBO Max. She lives in New York City and Los Angeles.
About the Book
The award-winning, bestselling author of Station Eleven and Sea of Tranquility returns with a breathtaking novel of doubles, shadow worlds, and fractured timelines as a man disappears from a glittering Los Angeles party, and a woman—a gunrunner, an art collector, an operative of the State—searches for answers. Los Angeles, 2031: The first spring after the collapse of the United States, peacekeeping troops withdraw from the city, the Jacaranda trees blossom, and the curfew is finally lifted. Ari Waker and her roommate pass the gauntlet of bomb-sniffing dogs, the shanty towns, and the Red Cross tents as they walk across Silverlake to a party. The mood is ecstatic inside the apartment, people drink and dance, a woman wears a silver dress, pleated like tinfoil. And then: A shift. A bewildered twin, an uncanny doppelganger stumbles through the crowd and out into the night, and Kareem, the party’s host, vanishes into thin air.
An unforgettable literary feat, Exit Party is a novel about the price of safety, the perils of the surveillance state, a requiem for a world not unlike our own, and a breathtaking story of resilience in the face of cataclysmic change.
Talking Volumes would like to thank our season sponsor Episcopal Homes.
