Meet the Author: Hilal Isler

Join us in celebrating the launch of Austin author Hilal Isler's new book Har Mar. Hilal will be in conversation with fellow Austin author, Amy Gentry. Light refreshments will be provided. Seating and refreshments are first come first served. 

In Hilal Isler’s gripping debut story collection, Har Mar, women in the early twenty-first century navigate the complex spaces between countries, families, languages, and selves. Isler’s characters are all on the verge of something—success, rebellion, revelation—and they want to disappear as much as they want to be seen. Moving back and forth between Turkey and the United States, these stories trace migrations both physical and emotional: a nanny plots to flee the wealthy family she cares for in the Grand Bazaar of Istanbul; in Har Mar, a quiet mall tucked in the suburbs of Minneapolis, a bookseller escapes her grief in a complicated relationship with a wig retailer; an actress is hired by a famous American novelist to portray her at public events. The women in Har Mar don’t always make sound decisions, and they’re not trying to be heroes. But they are reaching—imperfectly, but fiercely—for connection, truth, and home. With moving prose and a deep sense of longing, this collection explores what it means to grow up in the margins, to live in translation, and to build a life at the edge of belonging.

HILAL ISLER teaches at the University of Texas. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in McSweeney’s, New York Magazine, The Believer, The Baltimore Review, The Paris Review online, and elsewhere. She is a 2023 McKnight Fellow in Creative Prose and lives with her family in Austin. Her doctorate is from the University of Pennsylvania.

AMY GENTRY is the author of the feminist thrillers Good as Gone, Last Woman Standing, and Bad Habits, as well as Boys for Pele, a book of music criticism in the 33 1/3 series. Her book reviews and essays have appeared in numerous outlets, including the Chicago Tribune, Salon, the Paris Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and the Austin Chronicle. Her interests include cake decorating and horror films, and her favorite movie is The Women (1939). She holds a PhD in English from the University of Chicago, where she wrote her dissertation on miniatures and modernism, and lives in Austin, Texas.

This event is for ages 18 and up. 

Meet the Author events provide an opportunity to hear a writer read their work aloud and discuss it with an audience.

Acompáñanos a celebrar el lanzamiento del nuevo libro de la autora de Austin Hilal Isler, *Har Mar*. Hilal conversará con otra autora de Austin, Amy Gentry. Se ofrecerán refrigerios ligeros. Tanto los asientos como los refrigerios se asignarán por orden de llegada.

Este evento es para mayores de 18 años.

El programa será principalmente en inglés, pero todos son bienvenidos.