Sam Sussman joins 92NY for the launch of his highly anticipated debut novel — an emotionally searing story about loss, memory, love, and Bob Dylan — Boy from the North Country.
A son returns home to his dying mother to discover the astonishing truth of his origins and the secrets of a woman whose life and wisdom he is only beginning to understand. This is the premise of Boy from the North Country, but Sam Sussman’s daring and tender debut is so much more — inspired by Sussman’s own mysterious celebrity paternity, it is a story of healing, mortality, art, and the myth of Bob Dylan — a story like none other.
In a candid reading and conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winner Ayad Akhtar, hear Sussman discuss his singular debut, one of the most intimate mother-son relationships of our literary era — his own complex and intertwined relationship with Bob Dylan and his music, untangling myth and reality to create art, writing a new kind of story about grief, and much more. This event will also be livestreamed.
Sam Sussman grew up in the Hudson Valley. He graduated with a BA from Swarthmore College and an MPhil from the University of Oxford and has lived in Berlin and Jerusalem. His writing has been recognized by BAFTA and published in Harper’s Magazine. Sam has taught writing seminars in India, Chile, and England and participated in the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature. He lives in the Yorkville neighborhood of Manhattan and his native Hudson Valley.
Ayad Akhtar is a novelist and playwright. His work has been published and performed in more than two dozen languages. He is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. His work includes Homeland Elegies, American Dervish, Junk, Disgraced, and McNeal.