Author Visit and Book Launch - Scott Guild in conversation with Timothy Schaffert - Plastic

Date and Time for this Past Event

• Saturday, Feb 17, 2024  3pm - 5pm

Location

Category

Arts

Details

Join us in welcoming author Scott Guild to Francie & Finch on Saturday, February 17th! Scott will be presenting his new book Plastic in conversation with Timothy Schaffert.

About the Book:
Erin is a Barbie-esque plastic girl living in a plastic world. Every day she eats a breakfast of boiled chicken, then conveys her articulated body to Tablet Town, where she sells other figurines Smartbodies: wearable tech that allows full, physical immersion in a virtual world, a refuge from real life’s brutal wars, oppressive governmental monitoring, and omnipresent eco-terrorist insurgency. If you cut her, she will not bleed—but she and her fellow figurines can still be cracked or blown apart by gunfire or bombs, or crumble away from nuclear fallout. Erin, who's lost her father, sister, and the love of her life, certainly knows plenty about death.

An attack at her place of work brings Erin another too-intimate experience, but it also brings her Jacob: a blind figurine whom she comforts in the aftermath, and with whom she feels an almost instant connection. For the first time in years, Erin begins to experience hope—hope that until now she's only gleaned from watching her favorite TV show, the surrealist retro sitcom “Nuclear Family.” Exploring the wild wonders of the virtual reality landscape together, it seems that possibly, slowly, Erin and Jacob may have a chance at healing from their trauma. But then secrets from Erin's family's past begin to invade her carefully constructed reality, and cracks in the facade she's constructed around her life threaten to reveal everything vulnerable beneath.

Both a crypto-comedic dystopian fantasy and a deadly serious dissection of our own farcical pre-apocalypse, Scott Guild’s debut novel is an achingly beautiful, disarmingly welcoming, and fabulously inventive look at the hollow core of modern American society—and a guide to how we might reanimate all its broken plastic pieces. Readers who loved Rumaan Alam’s Leaving the World Behind, Ling Ma’s Severance, Kevin Wilson’s Nothing to See Here, and Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story would lose themselves in this new world.

About the Album:
Plastic: The Album tells the story of the plastic figurines through a cycle of dynamic pop songs, featuring lyrics from the musical numbers in the novel. The singer/songwriter Anna Hoone (Loch Lomond) stars as Erin on the album, leading listeners song by song through her imperiled plastic world.

The album grew out of a collaboration between Scott Guild and the visionary artist Cindertalk (Son Lux, My Brightest Diamond), and includes additional contributions from the artist Gainsayer (Ages and Ages) and the producer Jeff Saltzman (The Killers, Blondie).

Look for Plastic: The Album on vinyl and all major streaming services this February 13, 2024.

About the Author:
SCOTT GUILD received his​ MFA from the New Writers Project at the University of Texas at Austin, and his PhD in English from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. He served for years as assistant director of Pen City Writers, a prison writing initiative for incarcerated students. He is currently an assistant professor at Marian University in Indianapolis, where he teaches literature and creative writing. Before his degrees, Scott was the songwriter and lead guitarist for the new wave band New Collisions, which toured with the B-52s and opened for Blondie.