Authors Diane Cook and Lydia Kiesling join the first-ever Twenty Summers virtual festival to talk about their recent novels, The New Wilderness (Harper, 2020) and The Golden State (Picador, 2019), respectively, both of which examine motherhood, the state of the world, and glimpses at even darker futures in unique, funny, and sometimes devastating ways.

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Diane Cook is the author of the novel, The New Wilderness, currently nominated for a Booker Prize, and the story collection, Man V. Nature, which was a finalist for the Guardian First Book Award, the Believer Book Award, and the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. Her writing has appeared in Harper’s, Tin House, Granta, and other publications, and her stories have been included in the anthologies Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Prize Stories. She is a former producer for the radio program This American Life, and was the recipient of a 2016 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband, daughter and son.

Lydia Kiesling is the author of The Golden State, a 2018 National Book Foundation “5 under 35” honoree, and a finalist for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. She is a contributing editor at The Millions and her writing has appeared at outlets including The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker online, The Cut, and The Guardian.