A conversation between Jonathan Lethem, award-winning author of "The Fortress of Solitude," and Stacie Williams, whose work "Bizarro Worlds" references Lethem’s characters and storylines to explore racism and gentrification.

A conversation between Jonathan Lethem, award-winning author of "The Fortress of Solitude," and Stacie Williams, whose work "Bizarro Worlds" references Lethem’s characters and storylines to explore racism and gentrification. Books will be sold and signed at the event.

Named one of America’s greatest storytellers by the Washington Post, Jonathan Lethem's latest novel, THE FERAL DETECTIVE, is his first detective novel since "Motherless Brooklyn" and it delivers the same memorable delights: ecstatic wordplay, deeply felt characters, and a wonderfully offbeat sense of humor.

Lethem is The New York Times bestselling author of 11 novels, including "The Fortress of Solitude" and "Motherless Brooklyn," winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. He co-edited the anthology "The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick" and the recently published Library of America anthology "Shake It Up: Great American Writing on Rock and Pop from Elvis to Jay Z."

Chicago writer Stacie Williams is the Director for the Center for Digital Scholarship at the University of Chicago. In her book BIZARRO WORLDS, she interrogates her own experience of gentrification and racism through the lens of Lethem’s superhero narrative, articulated in "The Fortress of Solitude." For Jonathan Lethem's characters, and for Williams in her own life, gentrification is a stand-in for racism—the "Big Bad" that affects education, policing, and housing policy. Williams's other work has appeared in Bitch Media, Midnight Breakfast, Literary Hub, New York Magazine, Catapult, Gordon Square Review, and The Rumpus.

Join us at the American Writers Museum for a conversation between these two exciting and talented authors. Books will be sold before and after the event.