Join us for a special event with Erica Ciccarone, who will chat about her debut novel, Borough Features, with poet and DJ Maggie Wells. Expect snacks and drinks!

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About Borough Features: 

Once a rising star in print media, journalist Gretchen Sparks just wants to be left alone. Four years have passed since an IED killed her brother overseas, and Gretchen has managed to shut out everyone who cares about her—except for Marty Mitnik, her editor at a large New York daily. Hard drinking, cynical and surly, Gretchen no longer takes on challenging assignments but resignedly edits her newspaper’s Borough Features blog, writing listicles and puff pieces designed to garner clicks.

But when Marty suffers a heart attack, she follows the last assignment he gave her—to a Coney Island woman who claims to possess a crime-fighting seagull. 

Gretchen is determined to ignore the signs of a career-making story, but the facts call to her through a host of New York characters: a former beauty queen with a philandering husband, a state senator accepting suspicious campaign contributions, a nefarious Nashville heart surgeon, and a teen boy who begs Gretchen to find out just how and why his grandmother died in the psych ward of a Brooklyn hospital.

Borough Features is about fighting to bring the truth to light in a world that’s been dimmed by grief. 

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Erica Ciccarone reported on the people and places of Nashville for damn near a decade. In her time as culture editor of the Nashville Scene, she won the David Carr Award in Investigative Reporting. But she called it quits in favor of more quaint pursuits. She is an associate editor at BookPage and founder of the nonprofit Cat Colony Food Pantry. 

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