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Jac Jemc

 

The Book Catapult is pleased to host local author Jac Jemc for her new novel, Empty Theatre on Tuesday, February 21 at 7pm. Jac will be in-conversation with Theodore McCombs.

History knows them as King Ludwig II of Bavaria and Empress Elizabeth of Austria, icons of the late nineteenth century who died young and left behind magnificent portraits and palaces. But to each other they were Ludwig and Sisi, cousins who shared a passion for beauty and a refusal to submit to the roles imposed upon them. Ludwig, spoiled and punished for his "unmanly" interests, falls hard for the operas of Richard Wagner and neglects his state duties in the pursuit of art. Sisi, married at the age of sixteen to her beloved Franzl, bristles at the value placed on her beauty and the expectation that she ravage her body again and again in childbirth. Both absurdly vain, both traumatized by the demands of their roles, Sisi and Ludwig struggle against the ideals they are expected to embody, and resist through extravagance, petulance, and frivolity. A tragicomic tour de force, Empty Theatre immerses readers in a rarefied, restrictive world where the aesthetics of excess belie the isolation of its inhabitants. With wit, pathos, and imagination, Jac Jemc takes us on an unforgettable journey through two extraordinary parallel lives and the tenuous friendship that linked them.

Jac Jemc is the author of False Bingo, The Grip of It, My Only Wife, and A Different Bed Every Time. False Bingo won the Chicago Review of Books Award for Fiction, was a Lambda Award finalist, and was long-listed for the Story Prize. Jemc teaches creative writing at the University of California San Diego. And she shops at The Book Catapult!

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Date: 02/21/2023
Time: 7:00pm - 8:00pm
Place:

3010-B Juniper Street
San Diego, CA 92104
United States