Josh Silver + Cory Michael Smith: Fruit Fly

Moderating this discussion is award-winning actor Cory Michael Smith. This event will be hosted in the Strand Book Store's 3rd floor Rare Book Room at 828 Broadway on 12th Street. Can’t make the event? Purchase a signed copy of Fruit Fly here. [https://www.strandbooks.com/fruit-fly-9798892426374.html] ACCESSIBILITY: Strand Book Store is an ADA compliant venue. The event space is accessible via elevator. Please ask a Strand employee upon arrival for directions to accessible seating if preferred. ASL interpretation is available for this event by request only. Please reach out to our events team at events@strandbooks.com by August 5 to request. For further information on accessibility in this space, or to make a request, please contact events@strandbooks.com. -------------------------------------------------------------------- A BBC must-read book of 2026—"Sharp, dark and humorous, it's a real nail-biter." Go gay. Go sad. Go dark. A washed-up author will stop at nothing to claw her way back to relevancy—even if it means appropriating a young gay man’s tragic story. Mallory Maddox is buried under seven years of writer’s block. With her status as a literary sensation fizzling, she’ll do anything she can to resurrect her career. Inspiration needs to strike—and fast. Enter Leo. He’s a struggling addict sleeping under bridges and trading sex for survival. He’s vulnerable. He’s enigmatic. He’s exactly what Mallory has been looking for. Mallory needs Leo if she wants another bestseller. The world needs Leo’s story right now, and Mallory believes she deserves to tell it. Really, it’s her story—she’s the one who wrote it, after all. But as secrets threaten to unravel more than just her career, Mallory must decide how far she will go to pen the perfect story. A razor-sharp satirical thriller, Fruit Fly will appeal to fans of R. F. Kuang’s Yellowface and Yomi Adegoke’s The List.