DATE: November 23, 2025 11:00am

LOCATION: "Room 6100 (Bldg. 6, 1st Floor)"

            Miami Dade College - Wolfson Campus

            300 NE 2nd Ave

            Miami, FL

            33132

 ADA CALHOUN, Crush: A Novel; HANNAH PITTARD, If You Love It, Let It Kill You: A Novel; and AMY SHEARN, Animal Instinct: A Novel

Date: Saturday, November 8th
Session Name: Coming of Middle Age
Time/Location: 3:15 PM - 4:00 PM, Capitol Extension Room: E2.010
Author/s: Ada Calhoun,Jessica Elisheva Emerson
Book/s: Crush | Olive Days
Moderator: Wendi Aarons
Session Description: Ada Calhoun and Jessica Elisheva Emerson explore the daring, messy,
and exhilarating terrain of middle age in Crush and Olive Days. In Crush, a long-term marriage
is upended when a wife confronts desire, heartbreak, and the liberating possibilities that
emerge when labels no longer define a life. In Olive Days, a young mother in Los Angeles’
Orthodox Jewish community navigates passion, secrecy, and self-discovery, testing the
boundaries between duty and desire. Both novels illuminate the unexpected, intoxicating, and
sometimes chaotic journey of finding oneself — and love — later in life.
Book Signing: 4:15 PM

Ada Calhoun’s career, the Village Voice noted in 2015, “can seem as though it were cobbled together from the resumés of three ambitious journalists.” Calhoun is a reporter, essayist, memoirist, ghostwriter and — as of this year — novelist; now, she will make her Chautauqua Lecture Series debut in conversation with Kwame Alexander, discussing the passions and opportunities that have shaped her life.

Ada Cal­houn is the author of, most recently, Crush — her debut novel released in 2025. Other works include Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, My Father, and Me, which was longlist­ed for an Andrew Carnegie Medal for Non­fic­tion; Why We Can’t Sleep: Wom­en’s New Midlife Cri­sis; St. Marks Is Dead: The Many Lives of Amer­i­ca’s Hippest Street; and the mem­oir Wed­ding Toasts I’ll Nev­er Give.

Throughout her career, Calhoun has been a crime reporter for the New York Post, fre­quent con­trib­u­tor to The New York Times Book Review, and the­ater list­ings edi­tor for New York mag­a­zine. She is an A‑list ghost­writer, hav­ing anony­mous­ly col­lab­o­rat­ed on 30 major non­fic­tion books in the past dozen years, includ­ing sev­er­al No. 1 New York Times bestsellers. She has writ­ten for Time, Nation­al Geo­graph­ic Trav­el­er, the Times Lit­er­ary Sup­ple­ment, the New Repub­lic, Bill­board, Cos­mopoli­tan, The Wash­ing­ton Post and Red­book.

Calhoun’s nation­al news report­ing has won sev­er­al awards, includ­ing a USC-Annen­berg Nation­al Health Jour­nal­ism Fel­low­ship, a Kiplinger fel­low­ship, a CCF Media Award (for her New York Times Mag­a­zine work on a legal chal­lenge in Alaba­ma), a Croly Award, and an Ali­cia Pat­ter­son Foun­da­tion fel­low­ship. She received a Mac­Dow­ell colony stay in 2013 for St. Marks Is Dead and has been grant­ed sev­er­al res­i­den­cies in the New York Pub­lic Library’s schol­ars’ rooms, includ­ing in 2023–24. In 2023 she was a fel­low at the Hawthorn­den Cas­tle in Scotland.

Kwame Alexander is a poet, educator, producer and No. 1 New York Times bestselling author of 40 books, including Why Fathers Cry at Night, An American Story, The Door of No Return, Becoming Muhammad Ali (co-authored with James Patterson), Rebound, which was shortlisted for the prestigious UK Carnegie Medal, and The Undefeated — the National Book Award nominee, Newbery Honor, and Caldecott Medal-winning picture book illustrated by Kadir Nelson.

The Michael I. Rudell Artistic Director of Literary Arts and Inaugural Writer-in-Residence at Chautauqua Institution, Alexander is the recipient of numerous awards, including The Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award, The Coretta Scott King Author Honor, three NAACP Image Award nominations and the 2017 Inaugural Pat Conroy Legacy Award. In 2018, he opened the Barbara E. Alexander Memorial Library and Health Clinic in Ghana, as a part of LEAP for Ghana, an international literacy program he co-founded. Alexander is executive producer, showrunner, and Emmy-winning writer of “The Crossover” TV series, which premiered on Disney+ in April 2023. “The Crossover” was produced in partnership with LeBron James’ SpringHill Company and Big Sea Entertainment, Alexander’s production company where he serves as CEO and co-founder, dedicated to creating innovative, highly original children’s and family entertainment.

His mission is to change the world, one word at a time.

What is love? Is it different than a Crush? Is there truth written in the lines of fiction? Esteemed authors Ada Calhoun and Jessica Soffer invite you to a discussion about their latest novels, Crush & This is a Love Story, and to dive with them into the sea of inquiry as they trace their lines of intersection and experience. Both books were two of the most discussed books of the year, with This is a Love Story breaking into the New York Times best-sellers list and Crush, being named a most anticipated book of 2025 by Time, Vulture, Bustle, Bloomberg, AARP, and Literary Hub. Following the discussion, there will be a brief Q&A with the authors. Books will be available for purchase and can be signed at the end of the event.  

Both works of fiction published earlier this year have an inspirational jump-off point rooted in the authors’ lives and deal with themes around partnership, love, loyalty, responsibility, and more. The nets in each book are cast wider than romantic love and allow readers to question the mechanics of love as it pertains to friendships, family, and professional colleagues. 

Crush, published February 25th, 2025 with Viking/Penguin is Calhoun’s debut work of fiction. The author of the celebrated memoir, Also a Poet, as well as cultural histories St. Marks Is Dead and Why We Can’t Sleep, brings her signature wit and humor to the gripping, sumptuous, zeitgeist-y novel about the state of marriage, midlife, and what happens when both are upended by the sudden, electrifying passion of a crush. 

“Crush (Such a charged word) interrogates all that we think we know about love and soulmates, commitment and conviction while tracking the long struggle to fully become oneself and do right.” – Booklist [starred review]

This Is A Love Story, published February 4th, 2025, through Dutton is Soffer’s sophomore novel and was received with enthusiastic critical acclaim like her debut novel There Will Be Apricots. Soffer brings a realistic, poetic, and delicate artistry to a moving family saga about a couple’s enduring love intermingling with their son’s feeling of alienation, a story of how hard life can be, and how the bond of love though tested can still endure in the face of inevitable challenges. 

“Written with delicate and beautiful brush strokes, this is a love story of a long marriage, a love story of Central Park, a story of how hard life can be, and how the hard leaves its mark, but the love does too. Every once in a while I read a novel and think, what a gift. This is one of those books.” – Ann Napolitano, New York Times bestselling author of Hello Beautiful and Dear Edward

A special thank you to our collaborating community book sellers, Canio’s Books, for joining us on this program.

WE ARE THRILLED TO WELCOME ADA AND SUSANNAH to Millbrook!  This event will be held @ THE Millbrook LIBRARY 3 Friendly Lane, Millbrook, NY 12545

BOOKS available for purchase below and will be availble for purchase onsite during the event.

Join us for a reading, conversation, and signing with not one, not two, but three powerhouse writers: Susannah Cahalan, Ada Calhoun, and Abbott Kahler! This trio was here for maybe the last event Rough Draft held pre-COVID and we’re thrilled to welcome them back to celebrate their new books!!

Minds on Fire: A Conversation with Ada Calhoun & Susannah Cahalan

Deep Water Literary Fest and CAS Presents Ada Calhoun and Susannah Cahalan in conversation with Aaron Hicklin

The Best Kind of Hell: Relationships in Contemporary Fiction - Tickets Required

Taper Hall 101

Saturday, Apr 26

12:30 PM - 1:30 PM

Event Description

Can you ever really know the people closest to you? Can they ever really know you? These stories take us behind the scenes of the woman shocked to learn that her husband doesn't think their life is...

Love and Heartbreak
Hosted by Timothy Liu

From the moment we feel the stirrings of our first big crush, romantic love—getting it, giving it, committing to it, figuring out what to do when fights erupt and passion fades—takes up a huge space in our hearts and minds. Love is one of life’s greatest joys, and losing it is one of life’s greatest torments. Journalist Lisa A. Phillips uses insights from what she calls “the love and heartbreak beat” to help us better understand romantic relationships in the teen years and beyond. Ada Calhoun’s fiction shows us that no matter how much we think we understand love, it can turn our lives upside down without warning. Join us for a conversation about love, hosted by poet Timothy Liu, whose poetry explores identity and sexuality with bold eroticism.

The Ex-Wives Club: Fiction of Marital Decay

Ada Calhoun, Wieke Wang, Alissa Bennett, Susan Minot, and Alexandra Jacobs

IN PERSON and ONLINE - Tickets $25-35

 “One’s duty is to feel what is great, cherish the beautiful,” wrote Gustave Flaubert in Madame Bovary, his seminal novel of marriage and desire, “and to not accept the conventions of society with the ignominy that it imposes upon us.”

Throughout literary history countless writers, from Flaubert, to Jean Rhys, to Nora Ephron, have written characters who heeded this advice — navigating the ignominy of their societies, and seeking out their own desires amidst various kinds of marital catastrophe — but perhaps never more so than in contemporary literature. Join our panel of writers, whose recently published, widely celebrated novels, explore the lives of women who endeavor to feel what is great and beautiful, and refuse to accept convention.

Their discussion will take place alongside readings from the novels that inspired these modern masterpieces, including Ursula Parrott’s newly rediscovered Ex-Wife, as we consider the novels that have reshaped our understanding of love, power, and marriage.

“What a mistake, above all, it had been to believe that I couldn’t live without him,” Elena Ferrante writes in Days of Abandonment, her novel of marital catastrophe, “when for a long time I had not been at all certain that I was alive with him.”

Join us Wednesday, March 12, 2025 at 6 pm at The Country Bookshop as Ada Calhoun is in conversation with Kimberly Daniels Taws about her new book CRUSH (https://www.thecountrybookshop.biz/book/9780593832028) . Ada Calhoun is the author of Also a Poet, named one of the best books of 2022 by The New York Times, NPR, and The Washington Post, longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, and featured on the Today show and PBS NewsHour. Her other books include St. Marks Is Dead and the New York Times bestseller Why We Can’t Sleep. Crush is her first novel.

Ada is a returning friend to Fountain and we're so excited to have her! She'll be talking about her new (and first!) novel with Kelly at the store.

Left Bank Books & the Left Bank Books Foundation present Ada Calhoun

Join us as we welcome Ada Calhoun, NY Times Bestselling author of Why We Can't Sleep, Also a Poet, & St. Marks Is Dead. We are excited to welcome Ada back for another great visit to St. Louis for her first novel Crush!

"The word 'crush' often conjures the innocence of adolescence--a time when your life story isn't yet written and anything is possible. But what happens when that dormant feeling is awakened in middle age? Ada Calhoun's Crush is a gripping fever dream of a book leading the reading into the beguiling depths of desire, ecstasy, and obsession." --Molly Ringwald

Calhoun will personalize and sign copies after the presentation! Personalized and signed copies will be available to be mailed anywhere in the country. For personalized copies, please order before noon on March 5th.

Calhoun will be in conversation with Left Bank Books' event coordinator Shane Mullen.

OFFSITE: Ada Calhoun presents CRUSH with Caitlin Shetterly

Monday, March 3, 2025 - 7:00pm to 8:00pm

Location: SPACE Gallery, 538 Congress St., Portland, ME

Tickets are required. To purchase tickets, please click here. 

Print: A Bookstore and SPACE Gallery present acclaimed author Ada Calhoun to discuss her first novel, Crush! The New York Times bestselling author of Why We Can't Sleep, Also a Poet, & St. Marks Is Dead will be in conversation with Maine writer Caitlin Shetterly.

An Evening with Ada Calhoun, Author of "Also A Poet"
 

Bestselling author Ada Calhoun joins us for her seductive new novel CRUSH

in conversation with her friend, Miami Book Fair's Lissette Mendez

About this Event

The Books & Books Literary Foundation is proud to present an evening with Ada Calhoun discussing Crush: A Novel (Viking, $30). When a husband asks his wife to consider what might be missing from their marriage, what follows surprises them both—sex, heartbreak and heart rekindling, and a rediscovered sense of all that is possible.

***Please note: This event will take place at the Books & Books in Coral Gables at 265 Aragon Ave. Tickets are FREE and books will be available for purchase at the event.

• Tickets are limited to restrict capacity at our store, and each ticket will include either a copy of the featured book or a $10 Books Are Magic gift card.
• Additional copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event.
• A signing will follow the talk.
• The event will also be livestreamed for free here: https://youtube.com/live/LwjQYd0Das0

THE EVENT IS SOLD OUT FOR IN-PERSON ATTENDANCE. BUT IT WILL BE LIVESTREAMED ON YOUTUBE.