Join us out on the patio at cocktail bar Glou for the launch of Rebekah Bergman’s debut novel The Museum of Human History, out August 1st via Tin House Books! Following a reading from the novel, Rebekah will be joined in conversation by fellow local author Alison Espach.
This event is free and open to all!
ABOUT THE MUSEUM OF HUMAN HISTORY
After nearly drowning, eight-year-old Maeve Wilhelm falls into a strange comatose state. As years pass, it becomes clear that Maeve is not physically aging. A wide cast of characters finds themselves pulled toward Maeve, each believing that her mysterious "sleep" holds the answers to their life's most pressing questions: Kevin Marks, a museum owner obsessed with preservation; Monique Gray, a refugee and performance artist; Lionel Wilhelm, an entomologist who dreamed of being an astrophysicist; and Evangeline Wilhelm, Maeve's identical twin. As Maeve remains asleep, the characters grapple with a mysterious new technology and medical advances that promise to ease anxiety and end pain, but instead cause devastating side effects.
Weaving together speculative elements and classic fables, and exploring urgent issues from the opioid epidemic to the hazards of biotech to the obsession with self-improvement and remaining forever young, Rebekah Bergman's The Museum of Human History is a brilliant and fascinating novel about how time shapes us, asking what--if anything--we would be without it.
ABOUT REBEKAH BERGMAN
Rebekah Bergman is a fiction writer living in Rhode Island. Her debut novel, The Museum of Human History, is forthcoming from Tin House Books (August 1, 2023).
Rebekah received a BA in literary arts from Brown University and an MFA in fiction from The New School. Her short stories have been published in Tin House Online, Joyland, and other journals. She is a contributing editor of NOON.
Rebekah was a 2018 Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and a winner of The Masters Review Anthology Prize, judged by Rebecca Makkai. She has earned fellowships, grants, and residencies from Art Farm, Brown University, and Tent Creative Writing and was selected for Wigleaf’s Top 50 (2019) and nominated for a 2020 Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.
ABOUT ALISON ESPACH
Alison Espach is the author of the novels Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance, an Indie Next Pick and Amazon Editors’ Pick for 2022, and The Adults, a New York Times Editor’s Choice and Barnes and Noble Discover pick. Her short story series In-Depth Market Research Interviews with Dead People is an Audible Original. She has written for McSweeney’s, Vogue, Outside Magazine, Joyland, Glamour, Salon, and other places. She teaches creative writing at Providence College in Rhode Island.