Join novelists KJ Dell'Antonia & Rachel Mans McKenny as they discuss their newest novels, The Chicken Sisters and The Butterfly Effect!

KJ Dell’Antonia is the author of the viral New York Times essay Why I Didn’t Answer Your Email, the former editor of the Times’ Motherlode blog and the author of the book How to Be a Happier Parent. Her debut novel, The Chicken Sisters, is a timely, humorous exploration of the same themes she focuses on in her journalism: the importance of finding joy in our families, the challenge of figuring out what makes us happy and the need to value the people in front of us more than the ones in our phones and laptops, every single time. It’s also the hysterically funny story of two small town sisters, one who stayed and one who left, each trying to use during a reality TV competition to finally resolve their ongoing feud over who made the better life choices. Expect picture-perfect lives that fall apart away from the camera, an all-chicken recreation of Stephen King’s Carrie and a manipulative host who really needs a donut—and expect to come away thinking about your own life choices, too.

Rachel Mans McKenny was a graduate of the Pennsylvania Governor’s School for the Arts, a YoungArts Scholar, and a US Presidential Scholar in the Arts. She received a degree in creative writing at Creighton University and an MA in literature from Iowa State University. She teaches composition and public speaking at Iowa State. A Midwesterner born and raised, Rachel is a writer and humorist. Her work has been published in The New York Times, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Electric Literature, The Rumpus, and other outlets (full list of publications here). Her debut novel, The Butterfly Effect, is out from Alcove Press as of December 2020. She is represented by Veronica Park at Fuse Literary. Rachel is an omnivorous and obsessive reader and reviews books on this blog (you can also find her @rachelm on Litsy). She a mom, is a decent cook, a passionate gardener, and pretty great at karaoke, specifically anything from Jagged Little Pill.