ThoughtGallery.org > Rebecca Godfrey & Darcey Steinke: Under the Bridge + Flash Count

Rebecca Godfrey & Darcey Steinke: Under the Bridge + Flash Count

Recounted in the riveting style of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, Under the Bridge is the true crime story of a group of middle-class teenagers-mostly girls-who in 1997 savagely beat a fourteen-year-old classmate to death and then tried to cover up the crime. In this anxious day and age, where schools no longer feel like safe places, Under the Bridge stands out as a compelling and thought-provoking true crime account that illuminates a major contemporary topic.

Flash Count Diary is a brave, brilliant, and unprecedented examination of menopause. Menopause hit Darcey Steinke hard. First came hot flashes. Then insomnia. Then depression. As she struggled to understand what was happening to her, she slammed up against a culture of silence and sexism. She felt lost until she encountered a scientific fact that had escaped her through the early stages of dealing with this life change: the only two creatures on earth that go through menopause, she discovered, are human women and female killer whales. Her fascination with this fact became the starting point for Flash Count Diary, a powerful exploration into aspects of menopause that have rarely been written about, including the changing gender landscape that reduced levels of hormones brings, the actualities of transforming desires, and the realities of prejudice against older women. Flash Count Diary is a deeply feminist book, honest about the intimations of mortality that menopause signals but also an argument for the ascendency, beauty, and power of the post-reproductive years in women’s lives.

Rebecca Godfrey’s first novel, The Torn Skirt, was a national bestseller and a finalist for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. Under The Bridge received one of Canada’s largest literary awards, the British Columbia Award for Canadian Nonfiction, as well as the Arthur Ellis Award for Excellence in Crime Writing. She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, and has received fellowships from Yaddo and The MacDowell Colony. In 2016, she edited and curated the multimedia exhibition, Girls In Trees. She teaches writing at Columbia University, and lives with her family in upstate New York.

Darcey Steinke is the author of the New York Times Notable memoir Easter Everywhere, as well as five novels. In 2017 Maggie Nelson wrote a foreword for a new edition of Suicide Blonde. With Rick Moody, she edited Joyful Noise: The New Testament Revisited (Little, Brown 1997). Her books have been translated into ten languages, and her nonfiction has appeared widely. Her web-story “Blindspot” was a part of the 2000 Whitney Biennial. She has been both a Henry Hoyns and a Stegner Fellow; Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi; and has taught at the Columbia University School of the Arts, Barnard, The American University of Paris, and Princeton. Flash Count Diary is her most recent book.

Jen George was born and raised in Southern California. She is the author of the story collection The Babysitter at Rest, out with Dorothy, a publishing project. Her writing has appeared in BOMB, Harper’s, the Los Angeles Review of Books, n+1 and the Paris Review Daily, among other places. She lives in New York, where she is currently at work on a novel.











When: Wed., Jun. 26, 2019 at 7:30 pm - 8:30 pm
Where: Books Are Magic
225 Smith St.
718-246-2665
Price: Free
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Recounted in the riveting style of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, Under the Bridge is the true crime story of a group of middle-class teenagers-mostly girls-who in 1997 savagely beat a fourteen-year-old classmate to death and then tried to cover up the crime. In this anxious day and age, where schools no longer feel like safe places, Under the Bridge stands out as a compelling and thought-provoking true crime account that illuminates a major contemporary topic.

Flash Count Diary is a brave, brilliant, and unprecedented examination of menopause. Menopause hit Darcey Steinke hard. First came hot flashes. Then insomnia. Then depression. As she struggled to understand what was happening to her, she slammed up against a culture of silence and sexism. She felt lost until she encountered a scientific fact that had escaped her through the early stages of dealing with this life change: the only two creatures on earth that go through menopause, she discovered, are human women and female killer whales. Her fascination with this fact became the starting point for Flash Count Diary, a powerful exploration into aspects of menopause that have rarely been written about, including the changing gender landscape that reduced levels of hormones brings, the actualities of transforming desires, and the realities of prejudice against older women. Flash Count Diary is a deeply feminist book, honest about the intimations of mortality that menopause signals but also an argument for the ascendency, beauty, and power of the post-reproductive years in women’s lives.

Rebecca Godfrey’s first novel, The Torn Skirt, was a national bestseller and a finalist for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. Under The Bridge received one of Canada’s largest literary awards, the British Columbia Award for Canadian Nonfiction, as well as the Arthur Ellis Award for Excellence in Crime Writing. She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, and has received fellowships from Yaddo and The MacDowell Colony. In 2016, she edited and curated the multimedia exhibition, Girls In Trees. She teaches writing at Columbia University, and lives with her family in upstate New York.

Darcey Steinke is the author of the New York Times Notable memoir Easter Everywhere, as well as five novels. In 2017 Maggie Nelson wrote a foreword for a new edition of Suicide Blonde. With Rick Moody, she edited Joyful Noise: The New Testament Revisited (Little, Brown 1997). Her books have been translated into ten languages, and her nonfiction has appeared widely. Her web-story “Blindspot” was a part of the 2000 Whitney Biennial. She has been both a Henry Hoyns and a Stegner Fellow; Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi; and has taught at the Columbia University School of the Arts, Barnard, The American University of Paris, and Princeton. Flash Count Diary is her most recent book.

Jen George was born and raised in Southern California. She is the author of the story collection The Babysitter at Rest, out with Dorothy, a publishing project. Her writing has appeared in BOMB, Harper’s, the Los Angeles Review of Books, n+1 and the Paris Review Daily, among other places. She lives in New York, where she is currently at work on a novel.

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