The 2024 One Book, One Philadelphia season is coming to a close with an exciting finale event! Join True Biz author Sara Nović and poet Ilya Kaminsky — author of 2019 National Book Award finalist Deaf Republic — at Parkway Central Library on Wednesday, May 22 at 7:30 p.m. for a conversation surrounding the themes presented in Nović's novel and how they intersect with our community and society at large.

Books will be available for purchase at the library at the event, and a book signing will follow the discussion. Online registration is required to attend.

In addition to the discussion, Kaminsky will do a poetry reading. Enjoy his most famous poem, "We Lived Happily During the War," below:

We Lived Happily During the War

And when they bombed other people’s houses, we
 
protested
but not enough, we opposed them but not
 
enough. I was
in my bed, around my bed America
 
was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house.
 
I took a chair outside and watched the sun.
 
In the sixth month
of a disastrous reign in the house of money
 
in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money,
our great country of money, we (forgive us)
 
lived happily during the war.

Sara Nović is an author, translator, and educator with an MFA in fiction and literary translation from Columbia University. She is the author of the two bestselling novels Girl at War and True Biz. Nović is a deaf rights activist and has written about Deaf culture for the New York Times, Slate, CNN, and the Washington Post. She lives in Philadelphia.

Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odesa, Ukraine in 1977, and arrived to the United States in 1993 when his family was granted asylum by the American government. He is the author of Deaf Republic and Dancing In Odessa and co-editor and co-translated many other books. His work was the finalist for The National Book Award and won The Los Angeles Times Book Award, The Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, The National Jewish Book Award, the Guggenheim Fellowship, The Whiting Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Metcalf Award, Lannan Fellowship, Academy of American Poets’ Fellowship, NEA Fellowship, Poetry magazine's Levinson Prize, and was also shortlisted for National Book Critics Circle Award, Neustadt International Literature Prize, and T.S. Eliot Prize (UK). Deaf Republic was The New York Times’ Notable Book and was also named Best Book of the Year by dozens of other publications, including Washington Post, Times Literary Supplement, The Telegraph, Publishers Weekly, The Guardian, Irish Times, Vanity Fair, Lithub, Library Journal, and New Statesman.

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