The reception for this book has been remarkable. I just want to say congratulations on an absolutely brilliant novel. So on, onto MEMORIAL! Let’s talk about your book. And I think that you have to hope, you know?Įllison: Absolutely. You know, one can hope! I don’t know that it’s been laid out as a massive, positive change in the cards, but one can hope. I don’t know what it’s going to be like in 10 years, when we look back on this, but hopefully, you know, it will not be all bad. We’ll look back on this and be very… I don’t know. I mean everywhere you turn something is happening, isn’t it? It is amazing. But yeah, that seems to be a shared understanding that we are in the midst of a painful change, much of it needed and timely and all of it, but you know, a bit frantic.Įllison: Very frantic. Perhaps it’s incredible in a way that takes some adjusting to.

I have a really good friend who’s convinced that it’s one thing to read about an incredible moment, but an entirely different thing to actually find yourself a part of that moment. Washington: I think that’s very much the sentiment, or it seems to be the sentiment for the overwhelming majority of us. Ellison discusses the book, writing inspirations, and what’s next for the young author.Įllison: What an amazing moment in time, right? I’ll just jump in with that, since you were just talking off camera about how moments happen and we don’t realize they’re happening while they’re happening. With his debut novel, Bryan Washington is breaking new ground in the literary world. With his signature generosity and eye for food, sex, love, and the moments that make us the most human, Bryan Washington returns with a brilliant new novel.An Interview with Bryan Washington, Author of Memorial Spanning Los Angeles, Houston, and Osaka, Family Meal is a story about how the people who know us the longest can hurt us the most, but how they also set the standard for love. When secrets and wounds become so insurmountable that they devour us from within, hope and sustenance and friendship can come from the most unlikely source. Can they find a way past all that has been said - and left unsaid - to save each other? Could they find a way back to being okay again, or maybe for the first time? TJ's not sure how to navigate this changed Cam, impenetrably cool and self-destructing, or their charged estrangement. When Cam returns to his hometown of Houston, he crashes back into the orbit of his former best friend, TJ, and TJ's family bakery. Kai's ghost won't leave Cam alone his spectral visits wild, tender, and unexpected. From the bestselling, award-winning author of Memorial and Lot, an irresistible, intimate novel about two young men, once best friends, whose lives collide again after a loss.Ĭam is living in Los Angeles and falling apart after the love of his life has died.

Family Meal by Bryan Washington