Seaside Series: Sarah Braunstein
August 27 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Sarah Braunstein will read from her novel Bad Animals, published by W.W. Norton in March 2024, followed by a conversation and book signing.
About Bad Animals
Now that her brilliant daughter is off at college, buttoned-up Maeve Cosgrove loves her job at her quiet Maine public library more than anything. But when a teenager accuses Maeve—Maeve!—of spying on her romantic escapades in the mezzanine bathroom, she winds up laid off and humiliated. While Maeve attempts to clear her name, her favorite author, Harrison Riddles, finally responds to her invitation to speak at the library. Riddles announces a plan to write a novel about another young library patron, a Sudanese refugee, and enlists Maeve’s help in convincing him to participate. A scheme to get her job back draws Maeve further into Riddles’s universe—where shocking questions about sex, morality, and the purpose of literature threaten to upend her orderly life.
A writer of “savage compassion” (Salvatore Scibona, author of The Volunteer), Sarah Braunstein constructs a shrewd, page-turning caper that explores one woman’s search for agency and ultimate reckoning with the kind of animal she is.
Author Bio
Sarah Braunstein is the author of the novels Bad Animals and The Sweet Relief of Missing Children, as well as a story collection, Baby in a Box, coming summer 2026 from W.W. Norton. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Joyland, Playboy, The Harvard Review, AGNI, Ploughshares, and is forthcoming in The Best American Stories 2025. She teaches in the department of English at Colby College. Read more about Sarah on her website.
The rain venue for all Seaside Series programs is SPL, 64 Main Street.