Author Talk: Anya Liftig in Conversation with Marcelle Soviero about Holler Rat: A Memoir

Please join us on Thursday, September 19, at 7 p.m., for an Author Talk program with Anya Liftig, a performance artist who grew up straddling suburban Connecticut and rural Appalachia, as she discusses her memoir Holler Rat with writer Marcelle Soviero. 

Holler Rat, published in August 2023, landed on the USA Today best seller list and has been reviewed as an ideal alternative to JD Vance's Hillbilly Elegy. Publisher's Weekly wrote, "Readers put off by the sermonizing of Hillbilly Elegy may find this glimpse at Appalachia more illuminating."

Anya Liftig grew up with a foot in two very different worlds. While her mother's upbringing was so rural that the other kids called her "holler rat," her father came from a comfortable upper-middle-class Jewish family. Liftig spent school years in affluent Westport, Connecticut and summers in the holler. Shaped by the experience, she would go on to win a scholarship to Yale and become an acclaimed artist, using provocative performances to explore the contradictions and unanswered questions of her life. But when the world Liftig was building for herself shattered, she was forced to reconcile where she'd come from with who she was and who she wanted to be.

A writer and artist, Anya Liftig has had her creative work exhibited at Tate Modern and MoMA, and published in The New York Times Magazine and BOMB. She has had fellowships at MacDowell and Yaddo and was awarded Franklin Furnace and Mertz Gilmore grants. She lives in Connecticut.

Marcelle Soviero is a writer, coach, educator and founder of Marcelle Ink, a boutique consulting firm offering services, workshops and classes for writers and creatives. She is the former editor-in-chief and publisher of Brain Child, The Magazine for Thinking Mothers and Brain Teen, The Magazine for Thinking Parents. Her work has been published in numerous media outlets including The New York Times, NPR, and Creative Nonfiction Magazine. She is the author of An Iridescent Life and co-editor of This is Childhood. Her memoir, Born Guilty, is forthcoming.

Elm Street Books will be selling copies of Holler Rat and Anya will sign them after her talk. A portion of the proceeds will go to Wilton Library.

The media sponsor of our author talk is GOOD Morning Wilton.

Registration required.