Reading: Maryse Meijer’s Northwood

Join us in the bookstore for this reading and conversation with Maryse Meijer, author of Northwood (Black Balloon), a darkly poetic novella which interrogates the ties between art, intimacy, and violence. Featuring original artwork from Rufus Newell and designed by Jonathan Yamakami. Minneapolis-based artist and illustrator Sarah Evenson will lead a discussion with Maryse, with light refreshments and book signing to follow. LEARN MORE.

A genre-breaking novella about a woman’s obsession with a brutal, violent lover that questions what we think about art, female sexuality, and intimacy.

“This strange and beautiful novel has everything I want: formal play, myths and fairy tales, the politics of art-making, the all-obliterating power and complexity of desire, a cabin in the woods. I can’t wait to see what Maryse Meijer does next.”—Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties

Part fairy tale, part horror story, Northwood is a genre-breaking novella told in short, brilliant, beautifully strange passages. The narrator, a young woman, has fled to the forest to pursue her artwork in isolation. While there, she falls in love with a married man she meets at a country dance. The man is violent, their affair even more so. As she struggles to free herself, she questions the difference between desire and obsession—and the brutal nature of intimacy. Packaged with a cover and end papers by famed English artist Rufus Newell and inventive, white-on-black text treatments by award-winning designer Jonathan Yamakami, Northwood is a work of art as well as a literary marvel.

MARYSE MEIJER is the author of Heartbreaker and Northwood. Her next collection of stories, Rag, is forthcoming from FSG Orginals. She lives in Chicago.