OFFSITE: Ada Calhoun presents CRUSH with Caitlin Shetterly

Monday, March 3, 2025 - 7:00pm to 8:00pm

Location: SPACE Gallery, 538 Congress St., Portland, ME

Tickets are required. To purchase tickets, please click here. 

Print: A Bookstore and SPACE Gallery present acclaimed author Ada Calhoun to discuss her first novel, Crush! The New York Times bestselling author of Why We Can't Sleep, Also a Poet, & St. Marks Is Dead will be in conversation with Maine writer Caitlin Shetterly.

Left Bank Books & the Left Bank Books Foundation present Ada Calhoun

Join us as we welcome Ada Calhoun, NY Times Bestselling author of Why We Can't Sleep, Also a Poet, & St. Marks Is Dead. We are excited to welcome Ada back for another great visit to St. Louis for her first novel Crush!

"The word 'crush' often conjures the innocence of adolescence--a time when your life story isn't yet written and anything is possible. But what happens when that dormant feeling is awakened in middle age? Ada Calhoun's Crush is a gripping fever dream of a book leading the reading into the beguiling depths of desire, ecstasy, and obsession." --Molly Ringwald

Calhoun will personalize and sign copies after the presentation! Personalized and signed copies will be available to be mailed anywhere in the country. For personalized copies, please order before noon on March 5th.

Calhoun will be in conversation with Left Bank Books' event coordinator Shane Mullen.

Ada is a returning friend to Fountain and we're so excited to have her! She'll be talking about her new (and first!) novel with Kelly at the store.

Join us Wednesday, March 12, 2025 at 6 pm at The Country Bookshop as Ada Calhoun is in conversation with Kimberly Daniels Taws about her new book CRUSH (https://www.thecountrybookshop.biz/book/9780593832028) . Ada Calhoun is the author of Also a Poet, named one of the best books of 2022 by The New York Times, NPR, and The Washington Post, longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, and featured on the Today show and PBS NewsHour. Her other books include St. Marks Is Dead and the New York Times bestseller Why We Can’t Sleep. Crush is her first novel.

The Ex-Wives Club: Fiction of Marital Decay

Ada Calhoun, Wieke Wang, Alissa Bennett, Susan Minot, and Alexandra Jacobs

IN PERSON and ONLINE - Tickets $25-35

 “One’s duty is to feel what is great, cherish the beautiful,” wrote Gustave Flaubert in Madame Bovary, his seminal novel of marriage and desire, “and to not accept the conventions of society with the ignominy that it imposes upon us.”

Throughout literary history countless writers, from Flaubert, to Jean Rhys, to Nora Ephron, have written characters who heeded this advice — navigating the ignominy of their societies, and seeking out their own desires amidst various kinds of marital catastrophe — but perhaps never more so than in contemporary literature. Join our panel of writers, whose recently published, widely celebrated novels, explore the lives of women who endeavor to feel what is great and beautiful, and refuse to accept convention.

Their discussion will take place alongside readings from the novels that inspired these modern masterpieces, including Ursula Parrott’s newly rediscovered Ex-Wife, as we consider the novels that have reshaped our understanding of love, power, and marriage.

“What a mistake, above all, it had been to believe that I couldn’t live without him,” Elena Ferrante writes in Days of Abandonment, her novel of marital catastrophe, “when for a long time I had not been at all certain that I was alive with him.”

Love and Heartbreak
Hosted by Timothy Liu

From the moment we feel the stirrings of our first big crush, romantic love—getting it, giving it, committing to it, figuring out what to do when fights erupt and passion fades—takes up a huge space in our hearts and minds. Love is one of life’s greatest joys, and losing it is one of life’s greatest torments. Journalist Lisa A. Phillips uses insights from what she calls “the love and heartbreak beat” to help us better understand romantic relationships in the teen years and beyond. Ada Calhoun’s fiction shows us that no matter how much we think we understand love, it can turn our lives upside down without warning. Join us for a conversation about love, hosted by poet Timothy Liu, whose poetry explores identity and sexuality with bold eroticism.

Minds on Fire: A Conversation with Ada Calhoun & Susannah Cahalan

Deep Water Literary Fest and CAS Presents Ada Calhoun and Susannah Cahalan in conversation with Aaron Hicklin