Lessons in Chemistry's Bonnie Garmus and David Ulin

Lessons in Chemistry, by Bonnie Garmus, is simply one of our favorite novels in recent memory. Indisputably. Her new novel, Peck & Peck, is just as irresistible as Lessons in Chemistry. How could it not be?

Set in the publishing world of 1980s New York City, it's about a young man whose life turns upside down when he is hired by the most prestigious, secretive, and dysfunctional poetry journal in the world: the renowned Peck & Peck.

It’s 1982, New York City. Crime is on the rise, muggings are in the streets, and Batter Gray, recent college graduate with a skill that no one wants—an “ear” for poetry—is worried about his future. While all of his friends have real jobs, he’s folding T-shirts at the Gap. As for love? No. Not unless you count Sallie Mae, the student loan tyrant. He hears from Sallie all the time.

But when Batter gets a dream job at Peck & Peck, the most prestigious poetry quarterly in the world, his life moves into the literary fast lane. Soon Batter is knee-deep in the secret war between the two Editors in Chief, the famous Peck brothers—twins and enemies—as well as being privy to the private affairs of their thirty-nine editors, whose professed mission is the same: Find originality. Reward creativity. Burn the rest.

And by burn, they mean incinerate. Because at Peck & Peck, “good” isn’t good enough, “interesting” doesn’t cut it, plagiarists aren’t tolerated, and parolees run the mailroom. Still want to submit your poem?

If you loved Lessons in Chemistry, you will love Peck & Peck.

While Bonnie Garmus is one of our favorite novelists, David Ulin is one of our favorite moderators. David L. Ulin is the author or editor of twenty books, including the novel, Thirteen Question Method, and Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles, shortlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. The recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and Ucross Foundation, as well as a COLA Individual Master Artist Grant from the City of Los Angeles, he is a Professor of English at the University of Southern California, where he co-directs the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities and edits the journal Air/Light.

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