Friday, September 11, 2026 at 7:00 PM
Skylight Books, Los Angeles
“At once an unflinchingly beautiful novel about queer desire, summer days, and casual sex that is also an elegy to friendship, grief, and lovers lost. Startlingly brave and brilliantly told, I devoured each page not sure what to expect next. The Living Realm belongs in the firmament of great gay fiction.” —Douglas Stuart, Booker Prize–winning author of John of John While cruising one evening by Teufelssee, a small glacial lake in the Grunewald forest on the edge of Berlin, a man spots a handsome stranger who bears an uncanny resemblance to his former lover. Only, Lukas died nearly thirty years ago. Yet the man cannot shake the feeling that it was really Lukas he saw. As the man spends a long, hot summer by the lake, he continues to encounter Lukas, and then other lost lovers as well. As he attempts to make sense of the strange occurrences and learns more of Teufelssee, he finds himself venturing deeper into the mystery of the forest, leading him to question not just his sanity but the nature of time itself. Written with the lyricism and erudition that have made Jordan Tannahill an internationally celebrated playwright, The Living Realm is a moving, dreamlike novel and an elegy to the ways our lives become entangled with history, the natural world, and those we love. Jordan Tannahill is a playwright and novelist. His debut novel, Liminal, received France’s 2021 Prix des Jeunes Libraires. His second novel, The Listeners, was short-listed for the 2021 Giller Prize and adapted into a limited series for the BBC. His most recent play, Prince Faggot, ran off-Broadway for seven months in 2025. He has twice won Canada’s Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama, and his work has been presented at venues including the Young Vic Theatre and Sadler’s Wells in London, the Kitchen and Lincoln Center in New York City, and the Deutsches Theater in Berlin. He lives in New York City with his husband. Annapurna Sriram grew up in Nashville Tennessee and a lot of her early artistic influences were informed by the unchaperoned movie rentals she found at the local public library. Annapurna received a BFA in Acting from Rutgers’ Mason Gross School of the Arts. Annapurna spent many years working in New York both on stage and in television and film. Her most cherished previous work includes Jesse Eisenberg’s The Spoils, Wallace Shawn’s Evening at the Talkhouse, the television shows I Think You Should Leave and Billions and the feature film Feral. Fucktoys premiered at SXSW and won the Special Jury award and was nominated for a Spirit Award for "Someone to Watch".