Goodbye, Vitamin author Rachel Khong will read from her new book, Real Americans.  She will be joined in conversation by Kaveh Akbar.  “Rachel Khong’s gripping second novel explores how biology, our parents’ abstract hopes for us, sheer luck, and the forces of history itself make us who we are. Real Americans is both a tender story of the intimate relationships between people and a sharp examination of very big questions of ethics, politics, and fate.”– Rumaan Alam

Rachel Khong is the author of Goodbye, Vitamin, winner of the California Book Award for First Fiction, and named a Best Book of the Year by NPR; O, The Oprah Magazine; Vogue; and Esquire. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Cut, The Guardian, The Paris Review, and Tin House. In 2018, she founded The Ruby, a work and event space for women and nonbinary writers and artists in San Francisco’s Mission District. She lives in California.

Kaveh Akbar is the author of the novel Martyr!, the poetry collections: Pilgrim Bell and Calling a Wolf a Wolf, as well as the chapbook, Portrait of the Alcoholic. He is also the editor of The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse: 110 Poets on the Divine, and Another Last Call: Poems on Addiction and Deliverance. He lives in Iowa City.