Stephen Fishbach + Emily Nussbaum: Escape!

Moderating the discussion is staff writer at The New Yorker Emily Nussbaum. This event will be hosted at The Church of the Village at 201 West 13th St.

Can’t make the event? Purchase a signed copy of Escape! here.

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A propulsive debut novel following a has-been reality TV star and a disgraced producer who get one last shot at fame on a show set on a remote island, only to realize that the stakes are beyond what they ever imagined.

Everybody gets the story arc they deserve.

Kent Duvall, a has-been reality winner, just wants another chance at glory--to find his way out of his depressing life and back to his highlight reel. When a scandal is captured on camera at a charity event, he gets his shot, on a remote island with seven other contestants. Each has been cast as a type—Ruddy the bully, Miriam the nerd, Ashley the love interest—but every one of them is more than they seem.

The contestants’ goal seems simple—survive the wild, build a raft, win treasure. But Beck Bermann, a disgraced reality producer, sees them as characters in her own redemption arc.

As the schemes and strategies spiral out, breakout camps sabotage each other, and rival producers struggle to control the storyline. Soon, the question becomes less about who will win than who will make it out in one piece.

Stephen Fishbach is a Pushcart Prize-winning writer and former television executive. A two-time Survivor contestant (voted onto the show the second time by millions of fans), he’s worked on the network side as a Vice President at MTV and freelanced for a reality producers’ trade group. He cohosts a weekly Survivor podcast, as well as a literary podcast, Paraphrase. Stephen graduated with honors from Yale and received a master of fine arts in fiction at New York University. His short story To Sharks—an excerpt from Escape!—was published by One Story, which garnered Stephen the Pushcart Prize. He lives in Washington, DC, with his wife and two daughters.

Photo Credit: Clive Thompson

Emily Nussbaum is a staff writer at The New Yorker, as well as the magazine’s former television critic. She is the author of I Like To Watch: Arguing My Way Through The TV Revolution and Cue The Sun: The Invention of Reality TV.