TICKETED EVENT AT THE RIO THEATRE: Bookshop Santa Cruz welcomes George Saunders, recipient of the 2025 National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, for a discussion about his wise, playful, electric novel Vigil, which takes place at the bedside of an oil company CEO in the twilight hours of his life as he is ferried from this world into the next. Vigil is Saunders's first novel since Lincoln in the Bardo, which won the Booker Prize.

George Saunders will be in conversation with bestselling author Parini Shroff (The Bandit Queens).

This event is cosponsored by The Humanities Institute at UC Santa Cruz and will take place at the Rio Theatre.