The Ashtrays Are Full and the Glasses Are Empty by Kirsten Mickelwait

Join us for a special event with Kirsten Mickelwait, author of The Ashtrays Are Full and the Glasses Are Empty, in conversation with Anne Evans. This event is free, but we appreciate your RSVP below so we can plan for your attendance.

Raised amid great wealth and privilege, Sara Wiborg Murphy rejects her family’s traditional values to build a golden life of creativity and beauty amid the Lost Generation in France.

This lush historical novel follows Sara from New York to Paris and Antibes and back again. Wherever she lands, her flair for celebrating life and the people around her makes her a doyenne of the bohemian elite.

With her husband, Gerald, she befriends such literary and artistic icons as Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, and Dorothy Parker. But when tragedy strikes her family not once but twice, she must learn to accept that perhaps a larger hand holds the keys to her fate.

Over time, Sara’s strength and resilience allow her to find a new equilibrium—long after the parties have ended. The Ashtrays Are Full and the Glasses Are Empty follows Sara through her very modern life to reveal how heartbreak can be healed by faith, unconditional love, and a creative mind.

“Kirsten Mickelwait writes down to the very bone of the Lost Generation's artists, writers, and families, revealing a past that was not archaic but a glittering guide to today. Weaving stunningly intricate details with a grandiose sweep, Mickelwait provides a jewel box of a book illustrating that none of us invented the fight for a singular creative life. The remarkable guide, Sara Murphy, hooked me from the first page, and I've mourned her since turning the last. I loved this book.” — Randy Susan Meyers, international bestselling author of The Many Mothers of Ivy Puddingstone

Kirsten Mickelwait had a 40+ year career as a professional copywriter and editor before turning to writing fiction and creative nonfiction. She's an alumna of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, the Napa Valley Writers' Conference, the Paris Writers' Conference, and the San Francisco Writers' Conference. Her short story, "Parting with Nina," won first prize in The Ledge's 2004 Fiction Awards competition. Her memoir, The Ghost Marriage, was published by She Writes Press in 2021, and her historical novel, The Ashtrays are Full and the Glasses are Empty, will be published by Koehler Books in May 2025. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she's at work on a new speculative novel.

Anne Matlack Evans is the author of the 2024 novel, The Light Through the Branches. She has also published fiction in The Bennington Review, Eclipse and Memoir (and); and nonfiction in The Ruminator Review and the San Francisco Chronicle. She received an M.A. in Comparative Literature from U.C. Berkeley, an M.F.A. in fiction from the Bennington Writing Seminars, and a fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center. A professor of English and creative writing at Napa Valley College, she also directed the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference for many years. She lives in Napa, California where she teaches comparative literature and writing.

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