Andrea Avery: Visiting Composer

Andrea Avery, author of Sonata: A Memoir of Pain and the Piano—which is currently being adapted for the stage—discusses and signs her new novel, Visiting Composer.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Enid Bluff has begun to fall out of love with music, not only because her ideas are too often dismissed by her male classmates (and professors) in the composing program where she studies at a mid-tier university, but because the boys'-club mentality around her has made this a lonely place to be, much less create. That changes, however, with the arrival of an enigmatic young woman who turns out to be the long-lost, presumed-dead American composer Gloria Clifford, straight from Baltimore in 1910. At nineteen, Gloria is at the beginning of her musical career, but she is already ensnared in an intoxicating and confusing relationship with her much older musical mentor--and soon-to-be husband--Luther Langdon. What follows is a story about friendship, the struggle to be both a woman and an artist, and those imbalances of power which end up repeating like unfortunate refrains, time and again.

ABOUT THE AUTHORAndrea Avery is the author of Sonata: A Memoir of Pain and the Piano (Pegasus Books), which is being adapted for the stage. Her work has appeared in Barrelhouse, CRAFT Literary, Ploughshares, Oxford American, Real Simple, and other places. She holds a B.A. in music, an MFA in Creative Writing, and an Ed.D, all from Arizona State University. She is working on a novel.This event is at our Phoenix location at 300 West Camelback Road, steps from the uptown Light Rail stop and directly across from the Park and Ride at Third Ave and Camelback.

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