“Kitamura’s words are tough, and her characters are tied to the tails of wounded beasts: mother countries, the land itself, and hierarchies both out of steam and out of date…Kitamura makes the end of history— many histories—seem both casual and immediate,” says Sasha Frere-Jones of The New Yorker. Set in unnamed colonial territory of an unspecified time period, Katie Kitamura’s second novel Gone to the Forest is a mash-up of colonialisms. The backdrop is native servants, unwanted settlers, and insurgent fervor. Kitamura tells the story of the deteriorating relationship between father and son as the country teeter on the brink of civil war. Kitamura will be joined by Ed Park, founder of The Believer and author of office satire Personal Days, who will share secret new work.

Plus, check out Kitamura’s interview with Hermione Hoby at The Margins.

Katie Kitamura is based in New York. Her first novel, The Longshot, was a finalist for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award. She has written for numerous publications, including The New York Times, Wired, and The Guardian, and is a regular contributor to Frieze.

Ed Park is a founding editor of The Believer and the former editor of the Voice Literary Supplement, and has worked as an editor at the Poetry Foundation. His articles, essays, and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, Bookforum, and other publications. His novel, Personal Days, was published by Random House in May 2008 and was a finalist for the PEN Hemingway Award, The John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize, and the Asian American Literary Award. It was named one of TIME’s Top Ten Fiction Books of theyear and one of The Atlantic‘s top ten pop culture moments of the decade.