Harvard Book Store Presents:

Jeff VanderMeer

presenting

Absolution: A Southern Reach Novel 

in conversation with Kelly Link

Harvard Book Store welcomes Jeff VanderMeer—author of Annihilation, winner of the Nebula Award and adapted into a movie—for a discussion of his new installment in the Southern Reach series, Absolution. He will be joined in conversation by Kelly Link—Hugo Award-winning fiction author.

Ticketing

Tickets include admission for one and one hardcover copy of Absolution pre-signed by the author. 

About Absolution

When the Southern Reach trilogy was first published a decade ago, it was an instant sensation, celebrated in a front-page New York Times story before publication, hailed by Stephen King and many others. Each volume climbed the bestseller list; awards were won; the books made the rare transition from paperback original to hardcover; the movie adaptation became a cult classic. All told, the trilogy has sold more than a million copies and has secured its place in the pantheon of twenty-first-century literature.

And yet for all this, for Jeff VanderMeer there was never full closure to the story of Area X. There were a few mysteries that had gone unsolved, some key points of view never aired. There were stories left to tell. There remained questions about who had been complicit in creating the conditions for Area X to take hold; the story of the first mission into the Forgotten Coast―before Area X was called Area X―had never been fully told; and what if someone had foreseen the world after Acceptance? How crazy would they seem?

Structured in three parts, each recounting a new expedition, Absolution is a brilliant, beautiful, and ever-terrifying plunge into unique and fertile literary territory. There are some long-awaited answers here, to be sure, but also more questions, and profound new surprises. It is the final word on one of the most provocative and popular speculative fiction series of our time.

Masking Policy

Masks are encouraged but not required for this event.

Jeff VanderMeer

Jeff VanderMeer is the author of Hummingbird Salamander; the Borne novels (Borne, The Strange Bird, and Dead Astronauts); and the Southern Reach series (Annihilation, Authority, Acceptance , and Absolution), the first volume of which won the Nebula Award and the Shirley Jackson Award and was adapted into a movie by Alex Garland. He has spoken at MIT, Columbia, Yale, and Vanderbilt, and gave the 2024 John Hersey Memorial Address at the Key West Literary Seminar. Environmental nonfiction by VanderMeer has appeared in Time, The Nation, and Esquire, among other publications. VanderMeer founded the Sunshine State Biodiversity Group nonprofit in 2023. He lives in Florida with his wife, Ann, and cat, Neo.

Photo Credit: Ditte Valente

Kelly Link

Kelly Link is the author of the collections Stranger Things Happen, Magic for Beginners, Pretty Monsters, and Get in Trouble. Her short stories have been published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, The Best American Short Stories, and Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards. She is a 2018 MacArthur Fellow and has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. She currently lives with her husband and daughter in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Photo Credit: Sharona Jacobs