Event begins at 9pm on Tue, Oct 20; doors at 8:30pm

Academy Award winning actor, director, writer, and producer Casey Affleck joins his friend Jim Shepard (The World to Come, The Book of Aron) to discuss Shepard’s work and his latest collection of short stories, THE QUEEN OF BAD INFLUENCES. THE QUEEN OF BAD INFLUENCES includes twelve compressed masterworks from this great American writer of catastrophe fiction, in which lives are upended as much by broken hearts as by collapsing dams, hideously mismanaged wars, gargantuan wildfires, and apocalyptic storms

“Jim Shepard is a fantastic writer—compassionate, funny, and fearless—[whose work] does what great writing always does: inspires us to look more closely at life, and be more caring.” – George Saunders

Casey Affleck and Jim Shepard on the set of THE WORLD TO COME

JIM SHEPARD has written eight novels, including The Book of Aron, which won the Sophie Brody Medal, the PEN/New England Award, the Ribalow Prize, and the Clark Fiction Prize, as well as six story collections, including Like You’d Understand, Anyway, which won the Story Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Eight of his stories have been selected for publication in The Best American Short Stories, two for The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, and four for The Pushcart Prize. He’s the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts, with his wife, the fiction writer Karen Shepard, and a Pittie mix and a beagle.

CASEY AFFLECK is a Massachusetts native and a father of two. He is an actor, writer, director and producer. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for Manchester by the Sea and received an Academy Award nomination for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.

Affleck wrote and directed Light of My Life and produced and starred in The World to Come, adapted from a story by Jim Shepard and directed by Mona Fastvold. Most recently, he directed Company, which premiered in competition at the Venice Film Festival this fall.

Tickets for this special event are $15; copies of THE QUEEN OF BAD INFLUENCES will be on sale at the event. Tickets go on sale Friday, Oct 9 at 1:00pm.