P&P Live!: Mary Gordon – Payback – in conversation with Meg Wolitzer

A novel of lifelong reckoning between two women: Unbeknownst to her many fans, Quin Archer, the revenge-loving queen of the reality-TV show PAYBACK, was once an angry teen named Heidi. Her true story is only to Agnes, who was her art teacher at a private New England girls' school in the 1970s. Agnes saw a spark of originality in the brooding Heidi. But when she suggests Heidi visit the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the girl returns with a disastrous account of having been picked up at the museum by an older man. Agnes's stunned response will haunt both women for decades. Mary Gordon narrates this tale of #MeToo misunderstanding, from a time before there was language to contain it. She carries us through Heidi's disappearance and reinvention as Quin, and Agnes's escape into career and family in Italy--until, inevitably, they meet again. A remarkable book about the precise weight of our words and deeds from a writer whose moral vision is deeply rewarding in its subtlety.

Mary Gordon is the author of nine novels, including There Your Heart Lies, Final Payments, Pearl, and The Love of My Youth; six works of nonfiction, including the memoirs The Shadow Man and Circling My Mother; and three collections of short fiction, including The Stories of Mary Gordon, which was awarded the Story Prize. She teaches at Barnard College.

Meg Wolitzer is the author of The Female Persuasion, The Interestings, The Ten-Year Nap, The Position, and The Wife. She was guest editor of The Best American Short Stories 2017, and has had short fiction appear in McSweeney’s, Ploughshares, The Pushcart Prize, and The Best American Short Stories. She has taught at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Skidmore College, and the 92nd Street Y, and along with singer-songwriter Suzzy Roche, was a guest artist in the Princeton Atelier at Princeton University. She is currently on the faculty of the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton, where she co-directs BookEnds.