Friday, September 19, 2025 at 7:00 PM
Skylight Books, Los Angeles
 CLICK HERE TO RSVP _**RSVP is recommended but not required. Entry and seating are first-come, first-served. RSVPs do not guarantee entry to a full event.**_ **From the author of _Man Gone Down_\--a _New York Times_ Top Ten Book of the Year and winner of the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award--comes a deeply personal memoir of race, trauma, alcoholism, parenting, mental illness and ultimately hope in a portrait of three generations of Black American men** In 2007, Michael Thomas launched into the literary world with his award-winning first novel _Man Gone Down_, a beautiful and devastating story of a Black father trying to claim a piece of the American Dream. Called "powerful and moving . . . an impressive success," by Kaiama L. Glover on the cover of the _New York Times Book Review_, Thomas' debut introduced a writer of prodigious and rare talent. In his long-awaited encore and first work of nonfiction, _The Broken King_, Thomas explores fathers and sons, lovers and the beloved, trauma and recovery, success and failure in a unique, urgent, and timeless memoir. The title is borrowed from T.S. Eliot's line in "Little Gidding" "If you came at night like a broken king," and the work ponders the process of being broken. Akin to Baldwin's _The Fire Next Time_ or Nabokov's _Speak, Memory_, Thomas' memoir unfolds through six powerful, interlocking and overlaying parts focusing on the lives of five men: his father--a philosopher, Boston Red Sox fan, and absent parent; his estranged older brother; his two sons growing up in Brooklyn; and always, heartbreakingly himself. At the center of _The Broken King_ is the story of Thomas' own breakdown, a result of inherited family history and his own experiences, from growing up Black in the Boston suburbs to publishing a prize-winning novel with "the house of Beckett." Every page of _The Broken King_ rings with the impact of America's sweeping struggle with race and class, education and family, and builds to a brave, meticulous articulation of a creative mind's journey into and out of madness. **Michael Thomas** is the author of the national bestseller Man Gone Down, winner of the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and a New York Times Top Ten Book of the Year. His writing has appeared in A Public Space, The New York Times, and in Ben George's anthology The Book of Dads. He is a professor of English at Hunter College. He lives in Brooklyn. Originally from Bali, Indonesia, **Cynthia Dewi Oka** is the author of four books of poems, most recently _A Tinderbox in Three Acts_, a Blessing the Boats Selection chosen by Aracelis Girmay (BOA Editions, 2022) and _Fire Is Not a Country_ (Northwestern University Press, 2021). A recipient of the Amy Clampitt Residency, Tupelo Quarterly Poetry Prize, and the Leeway Transformation Award, her writing has appeared in Oprah Daily, POETRY, The Atlantic, Academy of American Poets, Poetry Society of America, Hyperallergic, and elsewhere. Cynthia is an alumnus of the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers, and has taught creative writing at Bryn Mawr College, New Mexico State University, and The Writers' Program at UCLA Extension, as well as literary organizations such as Blue Stoop, Voices of Our Nations (VONA), Anaphora Arts, and the Vermont Studio Center. For fifteen years, Cynthia served social movements for racial, gender, climate, and migrant justice as an organizer, trainer, and fundraiser. Based in Los Angeles, she is currently working on a poetry manuscript and workshop offerings that bring together poetics, mythology, and ancestral memory in service of collective justice and liberation. For more info, follow her at @freedewi on Instagram or visit her website at [www.cynthiadewioka.com](http://www.cynthiadewioka.com/).