**This event is now over, but you can watch it on Youtube and Face­book!**

To pur­chase a copy of Gary Shteyn­gart’s Our Coun­try Friends or Claire Stan­ford’s Hap­py For You, please click here! 

Make sure to sign up for our oth­er Unpack­ing the Book event for the 2022 sea­son here and here!

Join Gary Shteyn­gart and Claire Stan­ford for a con­ver­sa­tion about what hap­pi­ness is in today’s frag­ment­ed world, and what the future of hap­pi­ness will be as tech­nol­o­gy advances. Mod­er­at­ed by Stephanie But­nick, host of Tablet’s Unortho­dox podcast.

Claire Stan­ford’s fic­tion has appeared in Black War­rior Review, The Rum­pus, Third Coast, Redi­vider, Paper Darts, and Tin House Flash Fri­days, among oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. Her work has received fel­low­ships and grants from the Jerome Foun­da­tion, the Min­neso­ta State Arts Board, the Kim­mel Hard­ing Nel­son Cen­ter for the Arts, the Brush Creek Foun­da­tion for the Arts, and the Ham­bidge Cen­ter for the Cre­ative Arts & Sci­ences. She holds an MFA in Cre­ative Writ­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta and is cur­rent­ly a PhD can­di­date in Eng­lish at UCLA, where she stud­ies sci­ence fiction/​speculative fic­tion, nar­ra­tive the­o­ry, and nov­el the­o­ry. Born and raised in Berke­ley, she lives in Los Ange­les. Her debut nov­el, Hap­py for You, will be pub­lished by Viking on April 19, 2022.

Gary Shteyn­gart was born in Leningrad in 1972 and came to the Unit­ed States sev­en years lat­er. His debut nov­el, The Russ­ian Debutante’s Hand­book, won the Stephen Crane Award for First Fic­tion and the Nation­al Jew­ish Book Award for Fic­tion. His sec­ond nov­el, Absur­dis­tan, was named one of the 10 Best Books of the Year by The New York Times Book Review, as well as a best book of the year by Time, The Wash­ing­ton Post Book World, the San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle, the Chica­go Tri­bune, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. He has been select­ed as one of Granta’s Best Young Amer­i­can Nov­el­ists. His work has appeared in The New York­er, Esquire, GQ, and Trav­el + Leisure and his books have been trans­lat­ed into more than twen­ty lan­guages. He lives in New York City.

Stephanie But­nick is deputy edi­tor of Tablet Mag­a­zine and a host of the Unortho­dox pod­cast. She is the author, along with her co-hosts, of The Newish Jew­ish Ency­clo­pe­dia: From Abra­ham to Zabar’s and Every­thing in Between. She has writ­ten for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

Cop­re­sent­ed by Jew­ish Book Coun­cil, The Jew­ish Muse­um, and Tablet Mag­a­zine