Leslie Jamison is the author of the essay collection The Empathy Exams, a New York Times bestseller. Her work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine and Harper's, among others, and she is a columnist for the New York Times Book Review.

With comparisons to Joan Didion and Susan Sontag, Jamison has turned the traditional addiction narrative on its head in this deeply personal and seamless blend of memoir, cultural history, literary criticism, and journalistic reportage. Join us for an evening on addiction and learn more about the writers whose work was shaped by alcohlism and substance dependence, including Raymond Carver, David Foster Wallace, and others. 

"Leslie Jamison has written an honest and important book. It will be important to recovering alcoholics who wonder if there really is life after booze, and I think it will be important to writers and critics, because she weaves her story of recovery into those of other artists"... "The most important thematic thread may be its insistence that the talented artist who needs booze or drugs to support his work and withstand his own vision does not, in fact, exist. All in all, vivid writing and required reading." ―Stephen King