TRUMPLAND opened yesterday at the Jean Cocteau Cinema, playing to large and enthusiastic crowds. Whatever you may think of Michael Moore or his politics, he’s never less than entertaining. He makes some great political points in TRUMPLAND, but even if you disagree with every one of those, there are a lot of laughs as well. We’re the only theatre in New Mexico showing the film and we’ll be running it through the election, so do come down and catch it if you can.

We do have one break in the TRUMPLAND screening schedule, however. Come Monday night, we’re having another one of our famous author events. This time the JCC is honored to be hosting EMILY ST. JOHN MANDEL, the best-selling author of STATION ELEVEN and other acclaimed novels.

I’ll be doing an interview with Emily, followed by an audience Q&A, and of course a signing. We should have all of her earlier novels in stock, as well as the new paperback of STATION ELEVEN.

Emily St. John Mandel is one writer that I’ve never met before, but I’m very excited that I will have a chance to talk with her. STATION ELEVEN just blew me away when I read it, a few years ago. Actually, it was the best novel I read that year (2014), and I was hoping it might be a Hugo contender, as regular readers of the Not A Blog might remember. I wrote, “One of the 2014 books that I did read stands above all the others, however: STATION ELEVEN, by Emily St. John Mandel. As best I can recall, I’ve never met Emily St. John Mandel, and I’ve never read anything else by her, but I won’t soon forget STATION ELEVEN. One could, I suppose, call it a post-apocalypse novel, and it is that, but all the usual tropes of that subgenre are missing here, and half the book is devoted to flashbacks to before the coming of the virus that wipes out the world, so it’s also a novel of character, and there’s this thread about a comic book and Doctor Eleven and a giant space station and… oh, well, this book should NOT have worked, but it does. It’s a deeply melancholy novel, but beautifully written, and wonderfully elegiac… a book that I will long remember, and return to.”

((Sadly, no, STATION ELEVEN did not get a Hugo nomination. The reports of my vast power and iuence within the field seem to be greatly exaggerated. So far as I can tell, my effect on the Hugo nominations is exactly nil. But I’ll keep recommending good stuff anyway. I’m stubborn)).

Anyway… if you’re here in the Land of Enchantment, come down and join us on Monday night and meet Emily St. John Mandel. And if you’re not, well, autographed copies will be available afterwards for mail order. Of her books, my books, books by all the great authors we’ve hosted. (Depending on what happens on Tuesday, we may remember Monday night as the last good time before the lights began to go out. Though I hope not).

Tickets to both TRUMPLAND and Emily St. John Mandel are available on the Jean Cocteau website: http://www.jeancocteaucinema.com/