Wednesday, April 15 at 7PM
WORD, 126 Franklin St
Brooklyn, NY 11222, USA
MFA alum Tejas Desai will be releasing Part II of his groundbreaking pandemic novel with stories, Bad Americans, with a spectacular book launch at WORD Bookstore in Brooklyn. He will read from this new book and be in conversation with William J. McGee, author of Half the Child and Attention All Passengers.
Published in two Parts, Bad Americans is a pioneering literary work–“a timeless masterpiece” that” tells the human tragedy of the pandemic era like never before.” Set during the 2020 Covid outbreak, mainly in New York City, the book presents the heartbreaking and hilarious stories of 12 diverse Americans quarantining at a mansion in the Hamptons run by an eccentric billionaire. Part Boccaccio, part Reality TV in prose, part satire and part tearjerker, the book is one of the most original and relevant fictional opuses of the decade.
Books will be available for signing and sale after the Q&A.
Tejas Desai is the author of the bestselling international crime trilogy The Brotherhood Chronicle (2018-2020), which has won 17 literary honors and has been acclaimed as “awe-inspiring,” “breathtaking,” “riveting” and “a must read that will keep you guessing.” His panoramic portrait of American society, The Human Tragedy, includes the award-winning Good Americans (2013), which was praised by Kirkus Reviews as “a solid collection of rare caliber” that “speaks volumes about the human condition and modern life in America,” and the multiple award-winning, groundbreaking pandemic novel with short stories Bad Americans, lauded by Publishers Weekly as a “powerful rendering of the human experience uniting a divided America,” and as a “timeless masterpiece” by Bestsellers World. The founder of The New Wei Literary Arts Collective & Movement, he has been profiled by numerous publications including HuffPost, Buzzfeed and The London Post. He attended Wesleyan University, University of Oxford and holds two Masters degrees, including a MFA in Creative Writing, from CUNY-Queens College. He was born, lives and writes in New York City, where he works as a supervising librarian for Queens Public Library.
William J. McGee was born in New York City and received an MFA in Fiction from Columbia University. Among other pursuits, he teaches undergraduate and graduate Creative Writing; represents air travelers as a competition and consumer advocate for a Washington, DC-based nonprofit; and is an award-winning investigative journalist and columnist. McGee is the former Editor-in-Chief of Consumer Reports Travel Letter and also worked in airline flight operations management and served in the US Air Force Auxiliary. He is the author of Attention All Passengers, a nonfiction exposé of the airline industry published by HarperCollins, and is developing AirFear, a scripted television drama. McGee lives on Long Island, where he is a member of a boxing club, and is–of course–at work on another novel. He is also a father.
