Women at the Crossroads
When the world pushes back, women push forward through friendship, acts of defiance, and sheer determination to take control of their lives. These three authors illuminate the many forms of female resilience, from intimate friendships to battles against systems designed to silence and constrain.
| Where: | Student Union Santa Rita (Seats 110)  |
| When: | Sat, Mar 14, 10:00 am - 10:55 am |
| Signing area: | UA Campus Store Book Sales (Mall) (following presentation)
|
| Genre: | Fiction / Literature |
| Moderator: | Caitlin Schmidt |
Panelists
Emily NemensEmily Nemens is a writer, illustrator, editor, and educator. Her debut novel, "The Cactus League," explored the world of spring training baseball and was published in 2020 to critical acclaim. Her new novel, "Clutch," published in February 2026, follows a group of longtime friends as they go through the biggest challenges of their lives....
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Anna NorthAnna North is the author of The New York Times bestseller and Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick "Outlawed." She also authored the America Pacifica and Lambda Literary Award winner "The Life and Death of Sophie Stark....
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Shobha RaoShobha Rao is the author of "An Unrestored Woman," a short story collection, and the novels "Girls Burn Brighter" and "Indian Country." She is the winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Fiction and was a Grace Paley Teaching Fellow at The New School....
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Books:
Clutch
A Novel
Emily Nemens
Fiction / Literature
Zando/Tin House
February 2026
ISBN 9781963108668
Hardcover, 400 pages
Buy nowAs undergrads, Reba, Hillary, Carson, Gregg, and Bella formed the kind of rare bond that college brochures promise—friendship that lasts a lifetime.
Two decades later, the women are spread across the country but remain firmly tethered through their ever-unfurling group chat. They’ve made it through COVID and childbirth and midcareer challenges, but no one can anticipate what’s coming down the pike.
The five women converge on Palm Springs for a long overdue reunion: Gregg, who has forged a path as a progressive Texas legislator, is facing a huge decision about her political future. Reba, who moved back to the Bay Area after decades away, is deep in IVF treatments while caring for her aging parents and navigating a San Francisco she hardly recognizes. Hillary's medical career in Chicago is going great—but at home, her husband's struggles with addiction have derailed their life. In New York City, Bella faces the biggest case in her career as a litigator while her home life crumbles around her, and across the river in Brooklyn, Carson is working on a new novel as well as forging a possible relationship with the father she's never met.
Twenty years into their shared friendship, the stakes are higher than ever, and they must help one another reconcile professional ambition with personal tumult. Clutch is a big, beautiful, and deeply absorbing novel that asks how much space and heart we can give to our friends and our families, and what space we can save for ourselves. More/less
Bog Queen
A Novel
Anna North
Fiction / Literature
Bloomsbury USA
October 2025
ISBN 9781635579666
288 pages
Buy now
Indian Country
A Novel
Shobha Rao
Fiction / Literature
Random House
August 2025
ISBN 9780593798959
Hardcover, 432 pages
Buy nowFrom the award-winning author of "Girls Burn Brighter," a couple from India—so different from generations of white colonialists who came before them—move to Montana, only to discover the secrets the land holds in this stunning literary novel.
Janavi and Sagar were never meant to end up married. Janavi is a wonderfully independent, young modern Indian woman. She works for an organization in India that helps street children, often lost to the world of human trafficking. Sagar is a trained hydraulic engineer, an expert in dam construction. He is the least favorite son, his parents never able to forgive him for an unspeakable act from his past. Sagar seeks refuge in his daydreams of one day finding hidden treasures in the fabled Indian river, the Ganges.
Yet the two are forced together into an arranged marriage which neither of them wants. Even worse, Sagar has already accepted a job in America, in a strange place called Montana, where he will be in charge of dismantling a dam.
Montana upends all their expectations. Sagar's white colleagues do not welcome him with open arms, and Janavi finds herself unable to forgive her sister who stayed behind in India whose betrayal led her to this marriage and this strange place.
When a colleague of Sagar's is found drowned, Sagar is the obvious scapegoat. But is this death one in a long history of people of color paying the price for the white man's arrogance and expansionism?
Just like the Ganges river that dominates Sagar's dreams, throughout the novel runs short historical stories of settlers who conquered, both the west and India, who form the foundation upon which Sagar and Janavi stand.
A bold, ambitious, stunningly beautiful yet brutal novel about colonialism and the rippling ramifications still felt today, "Indian Country" is a tour de force modern-day classic. More/less
