The Ties That Bind
Friendship and family often overlap, collide, and sustain us in ways both joyful and challenging. This panel brings together three authors who explore the interplay between chosen bonds and inherited relationships, showing how these connections shape all of us.
| Fast Passes: | This event has free Fast Passes. Fast Passes are not available yet. |
| Where: | Koffler Room 204 (Seats 300, Wheelchair accessible)  |
| When: | Sun, Mar 15, 10:00 am - 10:55 am |
| Signing area: | Sales & Signing Koffler/Commons (following presentation)
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| Genre: | Fiction / Literature |
| Moderator: | Meredith Amadee |
| Sponsor: | Session made possible courtesy of Lindy Mullinax and Ray Moldow |
Panelists
Jane HamiltonJane Hamilton’s novels have won literary prizes, been made into films, and become international bestsellers. Two of them, "The Book of Ruth" and "A Map of The World," were selections of Oprah’s Book Club....
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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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Catherine NewmanCatherine Newman is The New York Times bestselling author of the memoirs "Catastrophic Happiness" and "Waiting for Birdy," the middle grade novel "One Mixed-Up Night," the kids’ craft book "Stitch Camp," the bestselling how-to books for kids "How to Be a Person" and "What Can I Say?," and the novels "We All Want Impossible Things," "Sandwich," and "Wreck....
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Books:
The Phoebe Variations
A Novel
Jane Hamilton
Fiction / Literature
Zibby Publishing
September 2025
ISBN 9798991140287
342 pages
Buy now
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
Wreck
A Novel
Catherine Newman
Fiction / Literature
HarperCollins Publishers
October 2025
ISBN 9780063453913
Hardcover, 224 pages
Buy nowThe acclaimed bestselling author of "Sandwich" is back with a wonderful novel, full of laughter and heart, about marriage, family, and what happens when life doesn’t go as planned.
If you loved Rocky and her family on vacation on Cape Cod, wait until you join them at home two years later. (And if this is your first meeting with this crew, get ready to laugh and cry—and relate.)
Rocky, still anxious, nostalgic, and funny, is living in Western Massachusetts with her husband Nick and their daughter Willa, who's back home after college. Their son, Jamie, has taken a new job in New York, and Mort, Rocky’s widowed father, has moved in.
It all couldn’t be more ridiculously normal...until Rocky finds herself obsessed with a local accident that only tangentially affects them—and with a medical condition that, she hopes, won’t affect them at all.
With her signature wit and wisdom, Catherine Newman explores the hidden rules of family, the heavy weight of uncertainty, and the gnarly fact that people—no matter how much you love them—are not always exactly who you want them to be. More/less
