Prairie Lights Virtual – Zoom

Please join us for a reading and Q/A with Jen Silverman to celebrate the paperback release of their new book We Play Ourselves.  They will be joined in conversation by Julia May Jonas.

To join this virtual event, register here.

“We Play Ourselves offers a delightful, satirical glimpse into the entertainment industry and the price of fame. . . . Silverman balances wit with earnestness, the laugh-out-loud moments highlighting the absurdity of writing—whether plays, films or poetry, the genre she skewers most adroitly in a pitch-perfect parody of an overhyped ingénue. Cass’s desperation for a new, simpler life is universal. As she falls again and again, the reader believes she has the heart to pick herself back up.”—The New York Times Book Review

Jen Silverman is a New York-based writer and playwright. Jen is the author of the novel We Play Ourselves and the story collection The Island Dwellers. Jen’s poetry chapbook Bath is forthcoming with Driftwood Press, selected by Traci Brimhall. Plays include: Collective Rage: A Play in 5 Betties; The Moors; The Roommate and Witch. Jen’s plays have been produced off-Broadway, across the United States and internationally. Additional fiction, essays and poetry have appeared in Vogue, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, The Sun, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. Jen is a three-time MacDowell Colony fellow, a member of New Dramatists, and the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts (2022), New York Foundation for the Arts, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, as well as the Yale Drama Series Award. Jen also writes for TV and film.

Julia May Jonas’s first novel  Vladimir was named an Indie Next Pick, a New York Times Editor’s Choice, and People Magazine’s Book of the Week. She is a playwright, founder and artistic director of the theater company Nellie Tinder, and teaches theater at Skidmore College.