Author: Rachel Lyon in Conversation with Lynn Steger Strong

The author discusses and signs copies of her recently published novel "Fruit of the Dead," a reimagining of the myth of Persephone and Demeter. Lynn Steger Strong joins her in conversation.

About the Novel (from the publisher): 

An electric contemporary reimagining of the myth of Persephone and Demeter set over the course of one summer on a lush private island, about addiction and sex, family and independence, and who holds the power in a modern underworld.

Camp counselor Cory Ansel, eighteen and aimless, afraid to face her high-strung single mother in New York, is no longer sure where home is when the father of one of her campers offers an alternative. The CEO of a Fortune 500 pharmaceutical company, Rolo Picazo is middle-aged, divorced, magnetic. He is also intoxicated by Cory. When Rolo proffers a childcare job (and an NDA), Cory quiets an internal warning and allows herself to be ferried to his private island. Plied with luxury and opiates manufactured by his company, she continues to tell herself she's in charge.

Her mother, Emer, head of a teetering agricultural NGO, senses otherwise. With her daughter seemingly vanished, Emer crosses land and sea to heed a cry for help she alone is convinced she hears. Alternating between the two women's perspectives, Rachel Lyon's "Fruit of the Dead" incorporates its mythic inspiration with a light touch and devastating precision. 

Rachel Lyon’s debut novel "Self-Portrait with Boy" was a finalist for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize and is being adapted for film, with Zoe Kravitz and Thomasin McKenzie attached as leads. An editor emerita for "Epiphany," Rachel has taught for Bennington College, Sackett Street Writers Workshop, and other institutions. Rachel lives with her husband and two young children in western Massachusetts and Brooklyn, New York.

Lynn Steger Strong is the author of the novels "Hold Still," "Want" and "Flight." She teaches at Columbia and Princeton universities. 

Presented with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this programming do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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