Cynthia Zarin, Meg Wolitzer, and Judith Thurman: The Crisis of Desire

Celebrated poet and novelist Cynthia Zarin joins bestselling novelist Meg Wolitzer with National Book Award winner Judith Thurman for a reading from Zarin’s mesmerizing new novel, Estate — and a stirring conversation about the crisis of aging and love.

“In the middle of our life's journey, I found myself in a dark wood.” Ever since Dante began his Divine Comedy with these words, writers have attempted to grapple with the intoxicating blend of desire and crisis that so often arrives at the middle of our lives. Among our foremost contemporary chroniclers of love and aging, Cynthia Zarin, Meg Wolitzer, and Judith Thurman render the midlife crisis with clarity, grace, and startling power.

Zarin — whose poems are “as beautiful as anything being written today” (Wayne Koestenbaum) — has made a bold, propulsive entry to this canon with her second novel, Estate — not a sequel, but a mirror image of her acclaimed first novel, Inverno. Caroline, separated from her husband, finds herself drawn to Lorenzo, who has not one but two other lovers. What ensues is a story of erotic intensity and crisis, seduction and deception, charting the exigencies of desire. Estate is a tour de force, recalling the work of Elena Ferrante and Annie Ernaux.

Join Zarin, Wolitzer, and Thurman as they celebrate the launch of Estate with a reading and conversation about the literature of desire and mortality — the intensity, the taboos, the beauty, and the crisis of finding new love as we age.

“The elegance and incantatory power of Zarin’s prose, along with her virtuosity at observation, are undeniable.” — Sigrid Nunez