Maggie Shipstead, author of “Seating Arrangements.”
Maggie Shipstead, author of “Seating Arrangements,” will speak at the library on Monday, July 16 at 7 p.m.
Shipstead’s novel takes place during a three-day period as Win Van Meter heads to his family’s retreat on the New England island of Waskeke for his daughter Daphne’s wedding to a man named Greyson Duff.
Winn’s wife Biddy has taken great pains to create the perfect seating assignments, but even she couldn’t have foreseen the spectacle of misplaced desire, marital infidelity and monumental loss of faith in the rituals of American life that the event would boil down to.
Booklist called Shisptead’s debut novel “a seriocomic romp in a Meet the Fockers vein” in a review.
Shipstead was born in 1983 and grew up in Orange County, California, she is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a recipient of Stanford University’s Stegner Fellowship.
Her short fiction has appeared in Tin House, VQR, Glimmer Train, The Best American Short Stories and other publications.
