Tuesday, November 1, 7:00-9:30 PM

For Adults

*Registration for in-person attendance opens October 1 (live streaming of the event will be available here - no registration necessary for streaming)*

Rochester Reads, inaugurated in 2001 with Ernest J. Gaines’ award-winning novel A Lesson Before Dying, is an annual city-wide tradition in which Penfield Public Library has participated with Writers & Books in bringing readers together to discuss a specific book.

This year, Penfield Public Library is pleased to have Jason Mott, author of Hell of a Book and 2021’s National Book Award-winner visit! Mr. Mott will present a reading followed by a Q&A period and book signing. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at $14.45. Hell of a Book is at once about family, love of parents and children, art, and money.

A Black author sets out on a cross-country publicity tour to promote his best-selling novel. That storyline drives Hell of a Book and is the scaffolding of something much larger and urgent: since Mott’s novel also tells the story of Soot, a Black boy living in a rural town in the recent past, and The Kid, a possibly imaginary child who appears to the author on his tour. As their stories build and converge, they astonish, and as the nation reckons with a tragic police shooting playing over and over again on the news, what can it mean to be Black in America? Who has been killed? Who is The Kid? Will the author finish his book tour and what kind of world will he leave behind? Unforgettably told, with characters who burn into your mind and an electrifying plot ideal for book club discussion, Hell of a Book is the novel Mott has been writing in his head for the last ten years. In its final twists, it truly becomes its title.