Join Porter Square Books for a virtual event with Micah Nemerever, author of These Violent Delights, joined in conversation by Sam J. Miller (The Blade Between)! These Violent Delights has been selected as a staff pick twice in as many months and is described by both booksellers Ari and Caleb as (easily) one of the best books of the year. This event is hosted on Crowdcast, and is free and open to all!

When Paul enters university in early 1970s Pittsburgh, it’s with the hope of moving past the recent death of his father. Sensitive, insecure, and incomprehensible to his grieving family, Paul feels isolated and alone. When he meets the worldly Julian in his freshman ethics class, Paul is immediately drawn to his classmate’s effortless charm.

Paul sees Julian as his sole intellectual equal—an ally against the conventional world he finds so suffocating. Paul will stop at nothing to prove himself worthy of their friendship, because with Julian life is more invigorating than Paul could ever have imagined. But as charismatic as he can choose to be, Julian is also volatile and capriciously cruel, and Paul becomes increasingly afraid that he can never live up to what Julian expects of him.

As their friendship spirals into all-consuming intimacy, they each learn the lengths to which the other will go in order to stay together, their obsession ultimately hurtling them toward an act of irrevocable violence.

Unfolding with a propulsive ferocity, These Violent Delights is an exquisitely plotted excavation of the depths of human desire and the darkness it can bring forth in us.

Micah Nemerever studied art history and queer theory at the University of Connecticut, where he wrote his MA thesis on gender anxiety in the art of the Weimar Republic. He is a prolific home chef and an avid amateur historian of queer cinema. He lives in Seattle, Washington.

Sam J. Miller is the Nebula-Award-winning author of the forthcoming (super gay) gentrification ghost story The Blade Between, out on December 1, 2020 and available for preorder here.

PSB Presents: Micah Nemerever with Sam J. Miller, These Violent Delights