One Book One Town 2025 - 3/5 Author Talk

Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino is the town of Fairfield’s 2025 selection for One Book One Town (OBOT), which was announced last month. Each year, a book is chosen and the whole town is encouraged to read it and engage through discussion and programming. The DiMenna-Nyselius Library has once again incorporated the OBOT into the Winter Reading Challenge, and the student Book Club will be reading it this month too. We hope you will read it as well.

Beautyland is a science fiction novel about the fragility and resilience of life on our Earth and in our universe. It is a remarkable evocation of the feeling of being in exile at home, and it introduces a gentle, unforgettable alien for our times. Copies of the Beautyland are available at the DiMenna-Nyselius Library, for sale at the Fairfield University Store, and it also available as an audiobook through our Library’s new OverDrive subscription (download the Libby app and add Fairfield University as your library card). Good Different by Meg Eden Kuyatt, has been selected as a companion OBOT title for younger readers, and print copies are available to borrow from the Library as well.

Bertino will give a talk on Wed. March 5^th at 7:00pm, at the SHU Community Theatre, and free tickets are available from the Fairfield Public Library’s website. This event typically fills up, so register now for your seat!

Marie-Helene Bertino is the author of the short story collection Safe as Houses, and the novels Parakeet, 2 A.M. at The Cat’s Pajamas and, most recently, Beautyland. Beautyland has been named a Best Book of 2024 (So Far) by The New York Times, Goodreads, The Guardian, Time, Esquire, and Elle Magazines. Awards include The Pushcart Prize, The Iowa Short Fiction Award, The Mississippi Review Prize, The Frank O’Connor International Short Story Fellowship in Cork, Ireland, and inclusion in the O. Henry/PEN Prize and Best American Short Story anthologies. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Electric Literature, Tin House, Granta, Guernica, BOMB, among others. She has taught in the Creative Writing MFA programs of NYU, The New School, and Institute for American Indian Arts. She is currently the Ritvo-Slifka Writer-in-Residence at Yale University.

The OBOT committee, run by the Fairfield Public Library (FPL), includes librarians and staff from FPL as well as the DiMenna-Nyselius Library, Pequot Library, Fairfield Museum & History Center, Fairfield Public Schools, Experience Fairfield, WSHU Public Radio, Sacred Heart University’s Library.