Authors Damon Young (What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker) and Samantha Irby (Wow, No Thank You.) will discuss the trials and tribulations of putting out their debut books, publishing, their creative process, and other topics in the last installment of our LIVE series "How to survive in America" hosted by Damon Young.

Samantha Irby is an essayist, blogger, and a New York Times best-selling author. Irby maintains a popular blog, Bitches Gotta Eat. She is the author of two memoirs We Are Never Meeting in Real Life (2017) and Wow, No Thank You (2020). In these collections of essays, Irby offers poignant insight into universal topics like blackness, body image, poverty and failed relationships. Her first memoir, Meaty, is being developed into a TV series on FX, and will be helmed by the executive producer of Comedy Central hit Inside Amy Schumer. Irby has also done live readings and performances. She has opened for Baratunde Thurston during his "How to Be Black" tour, and she co-hosts Guts & Glory, a reading series featuring essayists, which perform all over Chicago. She has been profiled in the Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Reader, Chicago Tribune, as well as in TimeOut Chicago, and her work has appeared on The Rumpus and Jezebel.

Damon Young is writer, critic, humorist, satirist, and professional Black person. He's a co-founder and editor in chief of VerySmartBrothas -- coined "the blackest thing that ever happened to the internet" by The Washington Post — and a columnist for GQ. Damon's debut memoir -- What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker: A Memoir In Essays (Ecco/HarperCollins) --  is a tragicomic exploration of the angsts, anxieties, and absurdities of existing while black in America, and won Barnes & Noble's 2019 Discover Award. It was also longlisted for the PEN America Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award, nominated for an NAACP Image Award, and is a Krause Essay Prize nominee. NPR, which named it one of the best books of 2019, called it an "outstanding collection of nonfiction."  Damon currently resides in Pittsburgh's Northside, with his wife, two children, and his faithful bottles of Nexium and Lisinopril.

“Funny and sharp—it’s a frighteningly precise look at the cultural landscape. I can only read one essay at a time—not just because I’m distracted, but so as to savour Irby’s wit and wisdom.”
—Candice Carty-Williams, The Guardian

“There is no greater truth teller out there these days than Samantha Irby.”
—The Advocate, Women of the Year

The Show Must Go On(line) is made possible thanks to generous support from the Benter Foundation, The Heinz Endowments, the Juliet Lea Hillman Simonds Foundation, the Opportunity Fund, The Pittsburgh Foundation, Buncher Foundation, and an Anonymous Foundation.

How to survive in America w Damon Young ft. Samantha Irby presented by City of Asylum