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An evening with acclaimed writer Brad Gooch, this talk celebrates the release of his new memoir, Good Morning Moon: A Snapshot of an American Family. The book is more than a chronicle of a modern family, it is an unflinchingly honest account of Gooch’s decision to start a family later in life—an unexpected leap following decades in which such possibilities were unimaginable. Gooch movingly describes living through the AIDS crisis in New York, the loss of his first great love, and a surprise second act that includes finding love again, marrying his husband Paul and welcoming two boys through surrogacy.
Gooch writes with vulnerability about all that parenthood brings: not only joy and wonder, but also anxieties, night frights, money worries, and many universal themes that parents of children young and old will recognize. As with many parents, the arrival of children invites us to question our own mortality. Children become “living chronometers,” marking time in a way that reignites Gooch’s curiosity about his own upbringing as an only child in Pennsylvania. What he doesn’t expect to find is a mystery hidden in plain sight , one that only a DNA test can solve.
Brad Gooch is a poet, novelist, and biographer whose previous ten books include the bestselling Radiant: The Life and Line of Keith Haring, winner of the 2025 Lambda Award for Biography, a New York Times Book Critics Favorite Pick of the Year, and soon to be a television series from Andrew Haigh; Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor, which was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist and a New York Times bestseller; City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O’Hara; Godtalk: Travels in Spiritual America; and the memoir Smash Cut. He is the recipient of National Endowment for the Humanities and Guggenheim fellowships, and lives in New York City.