The National Writers Series event “An Evening in Conversation with Emily Giffin” with special guest host Stefanie Murray will take place on Thursday, May 29th at the City Opera House in downtown Traverse City. The Northern Michigan book reading and symposium will spotlight fiction writer Emily Giffin, who, after writing just six novels, has garnered a huge and loyal following. Her last three books have sold more than 400,000 copies each in hardcover and eBook alone, and she has debuted as high as #2 on the New York Times hardcover bestseller list. Vanity Fair likened her to a modern day Jane Austen “who has deftly traversed the topics of love, lost love, marriage, motherhood, betrayal, forgiveness and redemption.”
Her debut novel Something Borrowed was made into a movie starring Kate Hudson and John Krasinski. That novel sold more than 2.2 million copies. Her latest novel, The One and Only, which was released on May 20th, is written with intelligence, warmth, and wit. It’s a luminous novel about the choices we make in life and love, for better or worse.
Giffin, a Chicago native, graduated summa cum laude from Wake Forest University and the University of Virginia School of Law. After law school, she moved to Manhattan and practiced litigation at a large firm for several years while she paid back her school loans, wrote a novel in her very limited spare time, and dreamed of becoming a writer. She quit her job, moved to London to write full-time, and her dream became a reality when Something Borrowed—hailed as a “heartbreakingly honest debut” with “dead-on dialogue, real-life complexity and genuine warmth,”—became a surprise sensation, and Giffin vowed never to practice law again. Her first five novels, all filled with her endearingly flawed characters and emotional complexity, have been translated into twenty-nine languages, with five million copies in print worldwide. Giffin now resides with her husband and three young children in Atlanta, where she received the Georgia Debut Author of the Year Award.
The evening’s proceedings will be conducted by Stefanie Murray, who is the vice president for content and engagement for The Tennessean and tn Media in Nashville. Murray, a graduate of Traverse City Central High School, holds a master’s degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, and a bachelor’s degree in journalism and broadcasting from Central Michigan University. Murray grew up in Traverse City. Her family still resides in Interlochen. Murray says that she visits her family frequently, “especially in the summer to go boating on Green Lake, Long Lake and West Grand Traverse Bay.”
Tickets for “An Evening in Conversation with Emily Giffin” can be purchased in person at the City Opera House box office, online at CityOperaHouse.org, or by calling the Opera House at 231.941.8082.