Author Sarah Dunn Muses About Open Marriage, Exurbs and Boomer Life with Comedian Ali Wong

Live Talk Los Angeles presents author Sarah Dunn in conversation with comedian Ali Wong to discuss the writing life and her new novel The Arrangement Monday, March 27 in Santa Monica, 8pm.

Sarah Dunn, novelist and television writer (“Spin City,” “Bunheads”) is the creator and executive producer of the ABC series “American Housewife.” Her newest novel The Arrangement is a hilarious and emotionally charged work about a couple who embark on an open marriage. What could possibly go wrong?

The Arrangement has been called “daring and darkly funny… this summer’s must read” by author Candace Bushnell (Sex and the City). Maria Semple (Where’d You Go Bernadette?) described it as “a hilarious, spot-on comedy of the heart about middle-aged marriage and what happens when it goes off the rails.”

Dunn’s debut novel, The Big Love, is available to read in nineteen languages. She lives outside New York City with her family and their seventeen chickens.

Talking to Dunn will be comedian, actress and writer Ali Wong. On Mother’s Day 2016, Netflix released her first stand-up special “Baby Cobra,” which was filmed when she was seven months pregnant. Wong currently appears in ABC’s new sitcom “American Housewife” as well as writing on “Fresh off the Boat.” She makes regular appearances on Chris Hardwick’s late-night game show “@Midnight” and “Inside Amy Schumer.”

In The Arrangement, Lucy and Owen, ambitious, thoroughly-therapized New Yorkers, have taken the plunge, trading in their crazy life in a cramped apartment for Beekman, a bucolic Hudson Valley exurb. They’ve got a 200 year-old house, an autistic son obsessed with the Titanic, and 17 chickens, at last count. It’s the kind of paradise where stay-at-home moms team up to cook the school’s “hot lunch,” dads grill grass-fed burgers, and, as Lucy observes, “chopping kale has become a certain kind of American housewife’s version of chopping wood.”

When friends at a wine-soaked dinner party reveal they’ve made their marriage open, sensible Lucy balks. There’s a part of her, though -- the part that worries she’s become too comfortable being invisible -- that’s intrigued. Why not try a short marital experiment? Six months, clear ground rules, zero questions asked. When an affair with a man in the city begins to seem more enticing than the happily-ever-after she’s known for the past nine years, Lucy must decide what truly makes her happy-“real life,” or the “experiment?”

Event Details Tickets can be purchased at livetalksla.org and range from $20-$43. For more information, contact info@livetalksla.org. The talk takes place on Monday, March 27, 2017, 8pm at the Ann and Jerry Moss Theatre at the New Roads School, 3131 Olympic Blvd, Santa Monica, CA.

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