Thursday, March 5, 2026 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.**_ **Set during a doom-fated vacation to the Oregon coast, _The Disappointment_ follows a couple trying to hold close to one another while a bent reality—warped by personal losses and an ever-increasing drift toward the surreal—threatens to unravel them** It’s the night before a much-needed vacation, and Jack—a former playwright mourning his failed career—catches his husband, Randy, packing his mother’s urn. They had agreed: no mother on this trip. Parents, living or otherwise, aren’t the ideal guests for romantic getaways. But Randy has been carrying his mother’s remains everywhere since her death, and he isn’t ready to let go now. Despite its natural beauty and kitschy charm, the Oregon coast does not provide the respite the couple seeks. Instead, their surroundings and encounters with locals grow increasingly surreal as the days pass. An overly -dedicated Method actor, tantra-obsessed neighbors, and a child environmentalist who may be able to communicate with the dead are but a few of the characters whose presence exposes long-simmering tensions that threaten to undo Jack and Randy’s marriage—to say nothing of their hold on reality. Told with sly, irreverent humor, and shot through with dark currents of envy and longing for something other than what one has, _The Disappointment_ explores the mutual exhilaration and terror of being placed center stage in one’'s own life. **Scott Broker** is a queer writer, bookseller and teacher based in Los Angeles. His worked has appeared in _New England Review, Guernica, Fence, Ecotone_ and _The Idaho Review,_ among other publications, and he has received fellowships from Tin House and Lambda Literary. **Ruth Madievsky**’**s** writing appears in _The Atlantic_, the _Los Angeles Times_, _Harper’s Bazaar_, _The Cut_, _GQ_, _Guernica_, _Kenyon Review_, and elsewhere. She is the author of a poetry collection, _Emergency Brake_, and a Tin House Summer Workshop scholar. She cofounded the Cheburashka Collective, a community of women and nonbinary writers whose identities have been shaped by immigration from the Soviet Union to the United States. Originally from Moldova, she lives in Los Angeles, where she works as an HIV and primary care clinical pharmacist.