Upcoming Book Launch Honors Austin Author Edward Carey

AUSTIN, TEXAS — The Library Foundation and The Texas Book Festival will host a book launch and art exhibit opening celebrating the illustrated fiction of local author Edward Carey next month.

The event is scheduled on Tuesday, Oct. 23, at 7 p.m. in the Austin Central Library Art Gallery. This free event is open to the public, and part of The Library Foundation’s cultural series at Central, featuring authors, chefs, musicians, and films in the Central Library.

This event coincides with the publication date of Carey’s sixth novel, Little (Riverhead), a fictional telling of the life of Marie Tussaud, the woman who grew up an orphan and servant in late 1700s France, and went on to become the internationally known artist and founder of the famous London wax museum, Madame Tussaud’s.

This event will serve to honor Carey’s achievements as both a literary and visual artist, organizers said. The book launch will feature Carey in conversation with fellow author (and wife) Elizabeth McCracken, who will discuss Carey’s inspiration for the novel, how his writing and artistic process converge and conflict, and themes within the novel—rebellion, the human body, artistry and history, female empowerment, and more.

Carey will speak with McCracken surrounded by a curated exhibit of his visual work from Little and other book projects, including the YA Iremonger Trilogy, Observatory Mansions, Alva & Irva: The Twins Who Saved a City, as well as sketches from Carey’s next novel-in-the-making. The exhibit, titled “The Illustrated Fiction of Edward Carey,” will remain on display in the library through the end of 2018.

Edward Carey is described as a highly versatile artist, who eschewed his family’s tradition of naval service in England to study drama. His plays and adaptations have been performed in Romania, Lithuania, England, and Malaysia. Organizers said his novels, all of which he illustrated, have been translated into many different languages.

"Drawing and sketching are an integral part of Carey’s writing process—he illustrates the characters and settings he writes about to better understand the fictional worlds he creates," the event organizers wrote. "Those visual creations then become fixtures within his literary work, inviting readers deeper into the realm of Carey’s imagination."

Carey currently teaches at the Michener Center for Writers and the English Department at the University of Texas. “Now, for the first time, I'll be able to exhibit work from all my books—sculptures, drawings, paintings—and show work from my novel about the diminutive orphan girl who became Madame Tussaud," he said. "I feel incredibly lucky to have this exhibition in beautiful Austin, my home now for eight years.”

Little is described a wry, macabre, unforgettable tale of an ambitious orphan in Revolutionary Paris, befriended by royalty and radicals, who transforms herself into the legendary Madame Tussaud. Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked, calls Little an amazing achievement: “Devote yourself to its first few pages and you will be sentenced to finishing it. It’s a compulsively readable novel, so canny and weird that I am stymied for comparison. Dickens and David Lynch? Defoe meets Margaret Atwood? Judge for yourself.”

For more information, visit www.austinlibrary.org and follow along on Facebook at @LibraryFoundationATX, Twitter at @LibFoundATX, and Instagram at @libraryfoundationatx.

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>>> Top photo of Edward Carey by Tom Langdon, courtesy images