Isaac Fitzgerald will present the paperback release of his New York Times bestselling memoir Dirtbag, Massachusetts: A Confessional in conversation with the Raven's own Danny Caine. Don't miss this very special Sunday night conversation with Fitzgerald, one of the most engaging voices in the book world. Books will be available for sale and signing. 

ABOUT THE BOOK

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • USA TODAY BESTSELLER • Winner of the New England Book Award for Nonfiction • Winner of the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association Nonfiction Book of the Year

"The best of what memoir can accomplish . . . pulling no punches on the path to truth, but it always finds the capacity for grace and joy.” —Esquire, "Best Memoirs of the Year"

Isaac Fitzgerald has lived many lives. He's been an altar boy, a bartender, a fat kid, a smuggler, a biker, a prince of New England. But before all that, he was a bomb that exploded his parents’ lives—or so he was told. In Dirtbag, Massachusetts, Fitzgerald, with warmth and humor, recounts his ongoing search for forgiveness, a more far-reaching vision of masculinity, and a more expansive definition of family and self.

Fitzgerald’s memoir-in-essays begins with a childhood that moves at breakneck speed from safety to violence, recounting an extraordinary pilgrimage through trauma to self-understanding and, ultimately, acceptance. From growing up in a Boston homeless shelter to bartending in San Francisco, from smuggling medical supplies into Burma to his lifelong struggle to make peace with his body, Fitzgerald strives to take control of his own story: one that aims to put aside anger, isolation, and entitlement to embrace the idea that one can be generous to oneself by being generous to others.

Gritty and clear-eyed, loud-hearted and beautiful, Dirtbag, Massachusetts is a rollicking book that might also be a lifeline.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Isaac Fitzgerald appears frequently on the Today Show and is the author of the bestselling children’s book How to Be a Pirate as well as the co-author of Pen & Ink and Knives & Ink (winner of an IACP Award). His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, the Best American Nonrequired Reading, and numerous other publications. He lives in Brooklyn.

Danny Caine is the author of the poetry collections Continental Breakfast, El Dorado Freddy's, ​Flavortown, and Picture Window, as well as the books How to Resist Amazon and Why and How to Protect Bookstores and Why. His poetry has appeared in The Slowdown, ​LitHub, DIAGRAM, HAD, and Barrelhouse. He's a co-owner of the Raven Book Store, Publishers Weekly's 2022 bookstore of the year.