Wednesday, February 18, 2026 at 7:00 PM
Skylight Books, Los Angeles
 _I have the sense that something is being drawn between us. Not drawn as in line but as in arrow pulled back. Yet I don’t know which of us holds the bow, and which of us faces the arrow._ Christine is on tour for her novel, a revenge fantasy based on a real-life relationship gone bad with an older professor ten years prior. Now on the road, she’s seeking answers—about how to live a good life and what it means to make art—through intimate conversations with strangers, past lovers, and friends. But when the antagonist of her novel—her old painting professor—reaches out in a series of sly communiques after years of silence to tell her that he’s read her book, Christine must reckon with what it means to lose the reins of a narrative she wrote precisely to maintain control. When her professor invites her to join him at his house, on a remote island off the coast of Maine, their encounter threatens to change the very foundations of her life as she’s imagined it. A pristine and provocative high-wire act toggling the fictions we construct for ourselves just to survive and the possibilities that lie beyond them, _Discipline_ launches a spellbinding inquiry into the nature of art-making and rigor, intimacy and attention, punishment and release. **Larissa Pham** is the author of the essay collection _Pop Song_, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize. Her writing has appeared in _Granta_, _The Nation, The New York Times Book Review, Bookforum, Aperture,_ and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in fiction from the Bennington Writing Seminars and is an assistant professor of writing at The New School. _Discipline_ is her first novel.