Books & Books and Miami Book Fair present…

An Evening with Joseph Osmundson

in conversation with

Kristen Arnett & Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya

discussing

Virology: Essays for the Living, the Dead, and the Small Things in Between

(W. W. Norton & Company, $16.95)

Thursday, June 30, 7:30 PM | LIVE & IN-PERSON at Books & Books, Coral Gables

Signing to follow the conversation 

RSVP HERE TO ATTEND

Join us in-person at Books & Books as Joseph Osmundson discusses his latest book VIROLOGY  alongside Kristen Arnett & Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya.

This event is FREE and open to the public and books will be available for purchase the night of the event so make sure to stay after the talk for a book signing! Please RSVP only if you intend to join us.

About the Book:

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2022 by Literary Hub

A leading microbiologist tackles the scientific and sociopolitical impact of viruses in twelve striking essays.

Invisible in the food we eat, the people we kiss, and inside our own bodies, viruses flourish—with the power to shape not only our health, but our social, political, and economic systems. Drawing on his expertise in microbiology, Joseph Osmundson brings readers under the microscope to understand the structure and mechanics of viruses and to examine how viruses like HIV and COVID-19 have redefined daily life.

Osmundson’s buoyant prose builds on the work of the activists and thinkers at the forefront of the HIV/AIDS crisis and critical scholars like José Esteban Munoz to navigate the intricacies of risk reduction, draw parallels between queer theory and hard science, and define what it really means to “go viral.” This dazzling multidisciplinary collection offers novel insights on illness, sex, and collective responsibility. Virology is a critical warning, a necessary reflection, and a call for a better future.

BUY THE BOOK

About the Author:

JOSEPH OSMUNDSON is a professor of microbiology at New York University. His work has been published in leading biological journals including Cell and PNAS and in the Village Voice, Gawker, the Feminist Wire, and elsewhere. He lives and works in New York City.

KRISTEN ARNETT is the author of With Teeth: A Novel (Riverhead Books, 2021) which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in fiction and the New York Times bestselling debut novel Mostly Dead Things (Tin House, 2019) which was also a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in fiction and was shortlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. She is a queer fiction and essay writer. She was awarded a Shearing Fellowship at Black Mountain Institute and was longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize recognizing mid-career writers of fiction. Her work has appeared at The New York Times, TIME, The Cut, Oprah Magazine, Guernica, Buzzfeed, McSweeneys, PBS Newshour, The Guardian, Salon, and elsewhere. Her next book (an untitled collection of short stories) will be published by Riverhead Books (Penguin Random House). She has a Masters in Library and Information Science from Florida State University and currently lives in Miami, Florida.

KAYLA KUMARI UPADHYAYA is a lesbian writer of essays, short stories, and pop culture criticism living in Miami. She is the managing editor of Autostraddle and the assistant managing editor at TriQuarterly. Her short stories have been published in McSweeney’s, Joyland, Catapult, The Offing, and more, and her pop culture writing appears in The Cut, Vulture, Catapult, Bustle, and others. She was a 2021 nonfiction fellow for Lambda Literary’s Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices, and her chapbook Helen House will be published by Burrow Press in fall 2022.