LITERATURE + LECTURES

Blue Willow Bookshop presents a book signing and discussion with Mary Karr. Mary Karr, author of the memoirs The Liar's Club and Cherry, will join us to discuss and sign the paperback version of her newest memoir, Lit.

Mary grew up in Southeast Texas and had what could politely be called a troubled childhood, detailed in her earlier memoirs. In Lit, she discusses her descent into alcoholism and her recovery. It's a powerful, honest, beautifully written story that only Mary Karr can tell and we're thrilled to welcome her to Houston!

MARY KARR’s debut book, The Liars’ Club, hit the New York Times bestseller list in 1995 and stayed there for more than a year, almost singlehandedly launching a revival of the memoir. Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times called the book, which won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction, “astonishing… one of the most dazzling and moving memoirs to come along in years.” The Liars’ Club, a recounting of her apocalyptic childhood in the small East Texas oilfield town of Leechfield, was followed in 2000 by the sequel, Cherry, a document of the high school years, which USA Today calls “funny, eloquent, profane. . . no one tells stories like Karr.”

She has also written three books of poetry and her third volume of recollections, Lit: A Memoir. Lit chronicles her life as an adult and mother, as well as her time in “The Mental Marriott”—a loony bin so famous one Harvard grad suggested putting it on her resume.

Karr is the Peck Professor of English Literature at Syracuse University and has won Pushcart Prizes for both her poetry and essays; her poems frequently appear in The New Yorker.