Event Description
This event is part of GrubStreet's Manuscript Month, a programming deep dive into the publishing journey. Learn more about Manuscript Month here!
Part craft talk, part happy hour, Fiction and Nonfiction Walk Into a Bar brings the best of literary conversation out on the town.
Join genre-crossing literary stars Alexander Chee (bestselling author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel) and Hernán Díaz (Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Trust) for a lively conversation as they tackle the question: Where does truth end and fiction begin? Explore the space between what's true and what's invented on the page with two writers who've made careers of blurring the line and are ready to share how and why it works.
Register by April 13th to submit your questions for the moderated Q&A.
The party will continue at the Rockwell after the conversation, with drinks, fun, and book sales provided by our partners at Porter Square Books.
This event is 21+ and tickets include a free drink.
Tickets for sale here!
Ticketing Info:
Tickets are fully refundable through April 1st.
50% refunds available April 2nd–April 13th.
No refunds after April 13th.
Event Info:
Doors: 6:15pm
Show: 7:00-8:00pm
Afterparty: 8:00-10:00pm
About the Authors
Alexander Chee is the author of the novels Edinburgh and the national bestseller The Queen of the Night. His essay collection, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, was named a Best Book of the year in 2018 by New York Magazine, the Washington Post, Publisher's Weekly, NPR, and Time, and in 2025, Kirkus Reviews named it one of the one hundred best books of nonfiction of the 21st century. Chee is a recipient of the NEA Fellowship in Fiction, The Whiting Award, The Guggenheim and The USA Artists’ Fellowship. He teaches creative writing at Dartmouth College and lives in Vermont.
Hernán Díaz is the Pulitzer Prize-winning and New York Times bestselling author of two novels published in thirty-seven languages. He is the recipient of the John Updike award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, given to “a writer whose contributions to American literature have demonstrated consistent excellence.”
His first novel, In the Distance, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award, and it was the winner of the Saroyan International Prize, the Cabell Award, the Prix Page America, and the New American Voices Award, among other distinctions. It was also a Publishers Weekly Top 10 Book of the Year and one of Lit Hub’s 20 Best Novels of the Decade.
Trust, his second novel, received the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and was a New York Times Bestseller, the winner of the Kirkus Prize, and longlisted for the Booker Prize, among other nominations. It was listed as a best book of the year by over thirty publications and named one of the 10 Best Books of the Year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, and Time magazine, and it was one of The New Yorker’s 12 Essential Reads of the Year. One of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of 2022, Trust is currently being developed as a limited series for HBO, and it has been named one of the New York Times’s Best 100 Books of the 21st Century.
His stories and essays have appeared in The Paris Review, Harper’s, The Atlantic, Granta, The Yale Review, Playboy, McSweeney’s, and elsewhere.
He has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, and fellowships from the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, among others.