1 Bear 1 Book Alumni Wide Book Club Presents
Night Swim by Jessica Keener AM ‘84
Hosted by the Brown Club of Boston
Join us for our next installment of the 1 Bear | 1 Book Alumni Wide Book Club with a nomination from the Brown Club of Boston, Night Swim by Jessica Keener AM’84.
The discussion will be led by Boston Club member William Brisk ‘60.
The 1 Bear | 1 Book program seeks to connect alums globally by selecting books to read and discuss at the same time. Each Club has nominated a book that captures the zeitgeist of their region, a title they would tell a fellow alum, You Gotta Read This.
Register for the Zoom Event Here
Night Swim (2012) follows a dysfunctional Jewish family living in a suburb of Boston in 1970, and the coming of age of 16 year old Sarah Kunitz, who is looking back at a pivotal time when tragedy struck and upended her family.
From the outside, her parents' lifestyle appears enviable: a five-bedroom house, cocktail parties, a live-in maid to care for the four kids – but all is not well behind polished doors. In this enduring tale, Night Swim embraces the intimate complexities of love and grief, and reveals how a family, bound by heartache, learns to rise and overcome.
About Jessica Keener AM ‘84
Jessica Keener graduated from Brown's Graduate Writing program in Fiction in 1984. Her debut novel, Night Swim, was published in 2012 and became a national bestseller. She has published an award-winning collection of stories, Women in Bed. Her second novel, Strangers in Budapest, was an Indie Next pick, an Entertainment Weekly best new book, and a Southern Independent Bookseller Association bestseller.
Keener has published more than 100 features and essays, which have appeared in national publications including The Boston Globe, Agni, O: Oprah Magazine, and WBUR’s Cognoscenti. She's been the recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council artist grant, a writing fellowship from Wesleyan University, and a 2022 fellowship from the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. She has worked at The Atlantic’s editorial department as well as Harvard's Brigham and Women's hospital writing proposals to fund research and clinical care programs.
Her essay “The Flow Room,” originally published by WBUR’s Cognoscenti, was included in the award-winning anthology: LOVE IN THE TIME OF COVID-19, which won the 2021 Washington State Book prize. Her new novel, Evening Begins the Day, is forthcoming sometime next year. She lives in Brookline, MA and is working on a new book.