Gabrielle Hamilton at the Cambridge Public Library

Harvard Book Store and the Cambridge Public Library welcome Gabrielle Hamilton—chef and owner of Prune restaurant in New York City’s East Village, and award-winning author of Blood, Bones & Butter—for a discussion of her memoir Next of Kin.

RSVP for free to this event or choose the "Book-Included" ticket to reserve a copy of Next of Kin and pick it up at the event. Following the presentation will be a book signing.

Note: Books bundled with tickets may only be picked up at the venue the night of the event, and cannot be picked up in-store beforehand. Ticket holders who purchased a book-included ticket and are unable to attend the event will be able to pick up their book at Harvard Book Store up to 30 days following the event. This offer expires after 30 days. Please note we cannot guarantee signed copies will be available to ticket holders who do not attend the event.

An electrifying memoir about the demise of a singular family—a stunning new book by Gabrielle Hamilton, author of the New York Times bestseller and James Beard Award-winner Blood, Bones & Butter.

The youngest of five children, Gabrielle Hamilton took pride in her unsentimental, idiosyncratic family. She idolized her parents’ charisma and non-conformity. She worshipped her siblings’ mischievousness and flair. Hers was a family with no fondness for the humdrum.

Hamilton grew up to find enormous success, first as a chef and then as the author of award-winning, bestselling books. But her family ties frayed in ways both seismic and mundane until eventually she was estranged from them all. In the wake of one brother’s sudden death and another’s suicide, while raising young children of her own, Hamilton was compelled to examine the sprawling, complicated root system underlying her losses. She began investigating her family's devout independence and individualism with a nearly forensic rigor, soon discovering a sobering warning in their long-held self-satisfaction. By the time she was called to care for her declining mother–the mother she’d seen only twice in thirty years–Hamilton had realized a certain freedom, one made possible only through a careful psychological autopsy of her family.

Hamilton’s gift for pungent dialogue, propulsive storytelling, intense honesty, and raucous humor made her first book a classic of modern memoir. In Next of Kin, she offers a keen and compassionate portrait of the people she grew up with and the prevailing but soon-to-falter ethos of the era that produced them. A personal account of one family’s disintegration, Next of Kin is also a universal story of the emotional clarity that comes from scrutinizing our family mythologies and seeing through to the other side.

Gabrielle Hamilton is the author of the New York Times bestseller Blood, Bones & Butter, which won the James Beard Foundation’s award for Writing and Literature, and the cookbook Prune. She is the chef/owner of Prune restaurant in New York City’s East Village. Hamilton received an MFA in fiction writing from the University of Michigan and contributed to the monthly “Eat” column for The New York Times Magazine for five years. Her work has also appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, GQ, Bon Appétit, Vogue, The Wall Street Journal, Elle, and House Beautiful.

Masks are encouraged but not required for this event.

The Cambridge Public Library serves as a doorway to opportunity, self-development, and recreation for all its residents, and as a forum where they may share ideas, cultures, and resources among themselves and with people around the globe. Learn more at cambridgema.gov/cpl.

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