Literary Luncheon

Join Pequot Library and New York Times best-selling author Jean Hanff Korelitz for a thrilling afternoon celebrating literary fiction. Korelitz’s latest novel The Sequel is the much-anticipated follow-up to her celebrated best-seller The Plot. Korelitz is the author of nine novels, including Admission (basis for the 2013 film starring Tina Fey), The Latecomer, and You Should Have Known (adapted as HBO’s 2020 limited series, The Undoing, by David E. Kelley and starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant). Korelitz will deliver an author talk in conversation with Susy Hayes Jones, followed by a Q&A and book signing. Barrett Bookstore will be on hand to sell copies of Korelitz’s books. Susy Hayes Jones the creator and host of The Hayes’ Pages Literary Salon Series. She established Hayes’ Pages (@hayespages) in 2023 to share her love of books and to champion authors, libraries, and independent bookstores. Each ticket includes lunch and a glass of wine. Tables seat 10 guests each. Thank you for supporting Pequot Library’s Literary Luncheon. Proceeds support Pequot Library’s general operating budget. Pequot Library’s Literary Luncheon is a fundraiser, and a portion of your ticket price is tax-deductible. Tickets are limited and non-refundable. Tickets will not be sold at the door. Pequot Library is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that relies on public support for funding. Jean Hanff Korelitz was born in New York City and graduated from Dartmouth College and Cambridge University. She is the author of nine novels, including The Sequel, The Latecomer, and The Plot (the latter two in development for film or limited series), You Should Have Known (adapted by David E. Kelley as HBO’s 2020 limited series, The Undoing, starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant), the New York Times bestselling ADMISSION (adapted as the 2013 film starring Tina Fey), The Devil and Webster, The White Rose, The Sabbathday River, and A Jury of Her Peers. In addition, Korelitz is the author of a collection of poems, The Properties of Breath, and a middle grade reader, Interference Powder. Her novels have been translated into 30 languages. With her husband, Irish poet Paul Muldoon, she adapted James Joyce’s The Dead as an immersive theater piece which was staged by New York City’s Irish Repertory Theatre for three seven-week runs in 2016, 2017 and 2018, and 2024. She is the creator of BOOKTHEWRITER, which runs “Pop-Up Book Groups”, small gatherings with authors to discuss great books. The Plot was featured on The Tonight Show as the Fallon Summer Reads 2021 pick. Korelitz lives in New York City and has two grown up children. After the “insanely readable” (Stephen King) and “perfectly told” (Malcolm Gladwell) New York Times bestseller The Plot comes Jean Hanff Korelitz’s equally captivating new novel: The Sequel. Anna Williams-Bonner has taken care of business. That is to say, she’s taken care of her husband, bestselling novelist Jacob Finch Bonner, and laid to rest those anonymous accusations of plagiarism that so tormented him. Now she is living the contented life of a literary widow, enjoying her husband’s royalty checks in perpetuity, but for the second time in her life, a work of fiction intercedes, and this time it’s her own debut novel, The Afterword. After all, how hard can it really be to write a universally lauded bestseller? But when Anna publishes her book and indulges in her own literary acclaim, she begins to receive excerpts of a novel she never expected to see again, a novel that should no longer exist. That it does means something has gone very wrong, and someone out there knows far too much: about her late brother, her late husband, and just possibly… Anna, herself. What does this person want and what are they prepared to do? She has come too far, and worked too hard, to lose what she values most: the sole and uncontested right to her own story. And she is, by any standard, a master storyteller. With her signature wit and sardonic humor, Jean Hanff Korelitz gives readers an antihero to root for while illuminating and satirizing the world of publishing in this deliciously fun and suspenseful read. Jean Hanff Korelitz’s The Plot is a psychologically suspenseful novel about a story too good not to steal, and the writer who steals it. “THE PLOT is one of the best novels I’ve ever read about writers and writing. It’s also insanely readable and terrifying. The suspense quotient is through the roof.” — Stephen King From its first pages, The Plot ensnares you in a rich tangle of literary vanities, treachery and fraud. Psychologically acute and breathtakingly suspenseful, you’ll find yourself rushing towards a finale both astonishing and utterly earned. — Megan Abbott Jacob Finch Bonner was once a promising young novelist with a respectably published first book. Today, he’s teaching in a third-rate MFA program and struggling to maintain what’s left of his self-respect; he hasn’t written―let alone published―anything decent in years.