Author Events

Martin Sneider - Shelf Life

Wednesday, April 19, 5:30pm CT
In person at Washington University - Danforth Campus
Holmes Lounge (see map below for parking)
St. Louis, MO 63105
Please RSVP for the presentation here
 
Left Bank Books & Washington University presents retailing legend
& multi-award-winning adjunct professor of retailing at the Olin School of Business at Washington University,
Martin Sneider,
who will discuss his first novel and the first of a projected series of four novels about fashion and family,
Shelf Life,
at Holmes Lounge on Washington University's campus on April 19th at 5:30pm!
 
Order copies of
Shelf Life
from Left Bank Books to support authors and independent bookstores!
 
Sneider will personalize and sign copies for sale from Left Bank Books.
If you are unable to make it in person, leave a personalization note in your order.
 
 
Dr. Mahendra Gupta, former Dean, and Geraldine J. and Robert L. Virgil Professor of Accounting and Management at the Washington University Olin School of Business, will introduce Martin and MC the evening. 
 
Click to watch the Book Trailer
 

A fashion retailing legend, Martin Sneider has been a leader in the shoe and clothing industries for more than five decades and has served as a multi-award-winning adjunct professor of retailing at the Olin School of Business at Washington University since 1992. At the Olin School of Business, Martin created and taught a course devoted to luxury goods merchandising and marketing that included trips with students to Milan, Paris, and London to visit the showrooms of Armani, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Burberry, and Cartier.

A fourth-generation retailer, Martin started as a shoe salesman and rose to president, co-CEO, and chief merchant of one of the nation's largest fashion shoe and apparel specialty chains. He served on the Alumni Board of Directors of Harvard Business School, was chairman of St. Louis Children's Hospital, and received the Distinguished Alumni award from Washington University. He is the author of a highly acclaimed nonfiction book on the shoe industry. Shelf Life is his first novel and the first of a projected series of four novels about fashion and family. Martin has two children and four granddaughters and lives in St. Louis, Missouri, and New York City.

 

SHELF LIFE is a Jewish–American family saga about the rise of the St. Louis Feldmans' fashion retailing empire and how their business splits and ultimately devastates the family.

As the son of Max Feldman, the self-proclaimed “sodbuster from Omaha” and brilliant founder of the successful fashion shoe store chain Fratelli Massimo, Josh Feldman has always known his destiny . . . working alongside his father and one day succeeding him, a career path promised to him by Max. But as he comes of age, starts a family of his own, and works his way up in the business, Josh slowly begins to understand his father’s penchant for treachery. With Max’s ruthless ambition and his drive to be celebrated for his success, will Josh ever be allowed to succeed him?

When the family is divided over the future of the business, Josh must face the fact that his father's pledge to him may have exceeded its shelf life.

 

 

Wednesday, April 19, 2023 - 5:30pm

J. Ryan Stradal - Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club

Wednesday, May 3, 7pm CT
In person at Left Bank Books
399 N. Euclid Ave
St. Louis, MO 63108
Please RSVP for the presentation here
Virtually at Left Bank Books' YouTube Page
 
Left Bank Books presents New York Times bestselling author
J. Ryan Stradal,
who will discuss the highly anticipated new book that Roxane Gay calls "a perfect book,"
Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club,
in our store on May 3rd at 7pm!
 
Stradal will be in conversation with celebrated St. Louis author
Ciera Horton McElroy!
 
Join us in the store or on our YouTube Live Page.
Order copies of
Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club​​​​​​​
from Left Bank Books to support authors and independent bookstores!
 
Stradal will personalize and sign copies for sale from Left Bank Books.
If you are unable to make it in person, leave a personalization note in your order.
 
 
 
J. Ryan Stradal is the author of New York Times bestseller Kitchens of the Great Midwest and national bestseller The Lager Queen of Minnesota. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, Granta, The Rumpus, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. His debut, Kitchens of the Great Midwest, won the American Booksellers Association Indies Choice Award for Adult Debut Book of the Year. Born and raised in Minnesota, he now lives in California with his family.
 
From the New York Times bestselling author J. Ryan Stradal, a story of a couple from two very different restaurant families in rustic Minnesota, and the legacy of love and tragedy, of hardship and hope, that unites and divides them

Mariel Prager needs a break. Her husband Ned is having an identity crisis, her spunky, beloved restaurant is bleeding money by the day, and her mother Florence is stubbornly refusing to leave the church where she's been holed up for more than a week. The Lakeside Supper Club has been in her family for decades, and while Mariel's grandmother embraced the business, seeing it as a saving grace, Florence never took to it. When Mariel inherited the restaurant, skipping Florence, it created a rift between mother and daughter that never quite healed.

Ned is also an heir--to a chain of home-style diners--and while he doesn't have a head for business, he knows his family's chain could provide a better future than his wife's fading restaurant. In the aftermath of a devastating tragedy, Ned and Mariel lose almost everything they hold dear, and the hard-won victories of each family hang in the balance. With their dreams dashed, can one fractured family find a way to rebuild despite their losses, and will the Lakeside Supper Club be their salvation?
In this colorful, vanishing world of relish trays and brandy Old Fashioneds, J. Ryan Stradal has once again given us a story full of his signature honest, lovable yet fallible Midwestern characters as they grapple with love, loss, and marriage; what we hold onto and what we leave behind; and what our legacy will be when we are gone.

 

"This is a perfect book." --Roxane Gay, New York Times bestselling author of Not That Bad

"Stradal...displays his gift for writing female characters who are fully realized, sometimes unlikable, but always as flawed and compelling as real people. The Midwest setting is written with love and respect, and while the story is often heartbreakingly sad, there's also real warmth and comfort in Stradal's writing. A loving ode to supper clubs, the Midwest, and the people there who try their best to make life worth living." --Kirkus (starred)

Wednesday, May 3, 2023 - 7:00pm

Observable Readings presents Shelley Wong & Ina Cariño

Saint Louis Poetry Center’s Observable series celebrates its 20th season!

The Observable series features local and national poets sharing recently published and new work. Originally started in 2003 by poet Aaron Belz, Observable is a key part of the St. Louis poetry landscape, presenting the liveliness and diversity of contemporary poetry.

Series Curators: Dana Levin

Observable Readings – Spring 2023

Shelley Wong & Ina Cariño
Friday, April 14
7:00 p.m. (CDT) – In-person at High Low + Livestream Event
$5 | suggested donation

Enjoy the livestream here:
https://stlouispoetrycenter.org/events/observable-readings-april-2023
Or here:
https://www.facebook.com/stlouispoetrycenter/live

ABOUT THE POETS

SHELLEY WONG is the author of As She Appears (YesYes Books), winner of the Pamet River Prize and longlisted for the 2022 National Book Award. She is a Kundiman and MacDowell fellow and lives in San Francisco.

INA CARIÑO is a 2022 Whiting Award winner with an MFA in creative writing from North Carolina State University. Their poetry appears or is forthcoming in the American Poetry Review, The Margins, Guernica, Poetry Northwest, Poetry Magazine, the Paris Review Daily, Waxwing, New England Review, and elsewhere. She is a Kundiman fellow and is the winner of the 2021 Alice James Award for FEAST, just released from Alice James Books in March 2023. In 2021, Ina was selected as one of four winners of the 92Y Discovery Poetry Contest.

The Observable Readings series is supported in part by:

Friday, April 14, 2023 - 7:00pm

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