Winthrop Reads encourages all adults in the Winthrop region to read and discuss the same book at the same time. “Our hope is to not only promote reading, but encourage dialogue in the form of a community-wide experience,” said library director Richard Fortin.

In the novel, Conley raises questions about the various definitions of community. Through the interlocking storylines, she forces us to think about what it means to belong, whether to a family, a country, or a cause.

Conley is a native of Maine whose work has been published in The New York Times, The Daily Beast, The Paris Review, the Harvard Review and The North American Review. As an editor at Ploughshares Magazine in Boston, she wrote book reviews and profiles. She has also taught creative writing and literature at several colleges including Emerson College, Simmons College, The University of New England, and within Harvard’s Teachers as Writers Program. She currently teaches at the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast MFA Program and is the Jack Kerouac Visiting Writer at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell.

Books will be available for purchase and signing courtesy of Apple Valley Books. For more information, call 207-77-8673 or visit baileylibrary.org.