Author Event with Roxana Robinson, Rachel Vail & Mary Pope Osborne

The Hickory Stick Bookshop is thrilled to welcome authors Roxana Robinson, Mary Pope Osborne and Rachel Vail, three of the authors who contributed to the one-of-a-kind collaborative book “Fourteen Days” which came out in February. They will be in conversation with author Elissa Altman. This event will take place at The Judy Black Memorial Park and Gardens in Washington on Friday May 24th at 4 pm. It is a ticketed event. Tickets will be available through EventBrite and will include a copy of the book. More details can be found on our website.

Sales of the book will benefit the Washington Arts Council to “increase support of cultural institutions and community events in order to foster independent artists and craftspeople.”

ABOUT THE BOOK
How do you bring together 37 writing superstars who don’t know one another to collaborate on a single novel that is NOT an anthology or Decameron? You create an entirely new literary form where each writer is tasked with inventing one character in an eccentric cast of New Yorkers who live in the same building during the COVID-19 lockdown. A skilled editing team, which includes Margaret Atwood and Doug Preston, expertly wove them together to become one literary voice, while keeping the identities of the writers secret.

“Fourteen Days” draws you into a Lower East Side tenement ambitiously called the Fernsby Arms, a building left behind by neighborhood gentrification and wealthier New Yorkers fleeing the pandemic. The bored, working-class residents of Fernsby Arms have little to do with each other—until one of them busts the bolt on the door to the roof. One by one, the tenants begin to illegally gather on top of the building. Perched high above a city that has abandoned them, they convene to watch the sunset, cheer for healthcare workers, and share stories about their lives. As the chapters unfold, the lonely, wary and sometimes contentious neighbors begin to band together, creating a found family to weather the storm. Their rooftop becomes a microcosm of the world around them under siege by a plague, as well as a love letter to the resilient and indomitable spirit of New York City.

The authors – Margaret Atwood, Doug Preston, Diana Gabaldon, Emma Donoghue, Sylvia Day, Dave Eggers, Tess Gerritsen, John Grisham, Celeste Ng, Tommy Orange, Erica Jong, R. L. Stine, Scott Turow, Meg Wolitzer, Roxana Robinson, Charlie Jane Anders, Jennine Capó Crucet, Angie Cruz, Pat Cummings, Joseph Cassara, Maria Hinojosa, Mira Jacob, CJ Lyons, Mary Pope Osborne, Alice Randall, Caroline Randall Williams, Ishmael Reed, Nelly Rosario, James Shapiro, Hampton Sides, Nafissa Thompson-Spires, Monique Truong, Luis Alberto Urrea, Rachel Vail, Weike Wang, De’ Shawn Charles Winslow