Chaucer’s Book Signing – Author/Poet David Starkey

Sunday, September 28 3:00 PM 

Chaucer’s Books (3321 State Street) hosts author and poet David Starkey for a book talk and signing of his latest novel, The Fairley Brothers in Japan. 

Description

From the author of Poor Ghost comes a poignant road trip novel following two middle-aged brothers, Chris and Andy Fairley, as they attempt an unlikely musical comeback in Japan.

Chris and Andy Fairley couldn’t be more opposite–Chris, an uptight, ever-pessimist, and Andy, a go-with-the-flow hopeful. Their glory days seemed long behind them since their moderate success as a folk-rock duo and their relationship with each other fizzled out in the mid-1980s. But when their hit song is unexpectedly chosen for a Japanese car commercial, the men are given one last shot to revive their fame and friendship.

They embark on a tour across Japan, but soon find their venues are far from glamorous: a wedding reception where they’re asked to play their hit on repeat, a flower farm gift shop, a windy sculpture park, and a restaurant where customers catch their own fish. As tensions between the brothers rise and a strange reporter begins following them all around the country, the men aren’t sure if the band or their relationship will survive. With echoes of Andrew Sean Greer’s Less, The Fairley Brothers in Japan is a gently comic exploration of aging, family, and belonging. It’s a tale of two brothers, not just hitting the road, but rediscovering themselves along the way.

About the Author  David Starkey served as Santa Barbara’s 2009-2011 Poet Laureate. He is Founding Director of the Creative Writing Program at Santa Barbara City College, Co-editor of the California Review of Books, and the Publisher and Co-editor of Gunpowder Press. Over the past thirty-five years, he has published eleven full-length collections of poetry with small presses–most recently Dance, You Monster, to My Soft Song and What Just Happened: 210 Haiku Against the Trump Presidency–and more than 500 poems in literary journals such as American Scholar, Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, and Southern Review. His textbook, Creative Writing: Four Genres in Brief (Bedford/St. Martin’s), is in its fourth edition. He is also the author of two composition textbooks: Hello, Writer: An Academic Writing Guide (Bedford/St. Martin’s) and Academic Writing Now: A Brief Guide for Busy Students (Broadview). Starkey is also a writer of fiction and creative nonfiction (published in American Literary Review, in Cimarron Review, in Living Blue in the Red States, and elsewhere), and a playwright whose plays have been produced across the United States (davidstarkey.net).