Monday, October 13, 2025 at 7:00 PM
Book Soup, West Hollywood
"A lush, sexy, absorbing novel that brings to life two artists who are inextricably linked in passion and competition." --Melissa Febos, author of The Dry Season and Girlhood, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award An intimate portrait of two women reckoning with love, sex, art, and identity in 1600s Amsterdam. Transformed by passion. Trapped by secrets. At age eight, Gerta Pieters disguises herself as a boy and goes to work in the service of the Oosterwijcks, a genteel Dutch family. Young, beautiful Maria Oosterwijck notices Gerta, and insists that she accompany her to Amsterdam, where Maria will study under a noteworthy Dutch artist. In Amsterdam, Maria rises in the ranks of society as a prodigy of still life painting. From the shadows, Gerta watches her ascension and learns to make herself invaluable to Maria in innumerable ways. As their relationship evolves, Gerta becomes so intrinsic to Maria's personal life--and her art--that their carefully maintained balance of power threatens to collapse. Inspired by the little that is known about renowned painter Maria van Oosterwijck's life, I Am You is a love story, a meditation on gender, an ode to artistic creation, and a study in obsession. Victoria Redel's novel brings to life the copious spoils of Amsterdam's Golden Age, and the perils that lay hidden within them for women like Maria and Gerta. "A stunning accomplishment." --Michael Cunningham, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Day and The Hours "Spellbinding, wonderfully atmospheric, and impossible to forget." --Sarah Jessica Parker, SJP Lit BIOS: Victoria Redel has written four books of poetry, most recently Paradise; her last novel, Before Everything, was published in 2017. Her short stories, poetry and essays have appeared in Granta, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Bomb, One Story, Salmagundi, O,and NOON among many others. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts and the Fine Arts Work Center. She is a professor in the graduate and undergraduate creative writing programs at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in New York City. Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum is the author of two novels, Ms. Hempel Chronicles, a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, and Madeleine Is Sleeping, a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize. Her fiction has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including the New Yorker, Ploughshares, Tin House, the Best American Short Stories, and the O. Henry Prize Stories. Her most recent book, the story collection Likes, was a finalist for the Story Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.