About the Event

Join author and Salmagundi Club member Sam Sussman in conversation with author Julian Tepper for a special evening celebrating the paperback release of Boy from the North Country, a finalist for the 75th National Jewish Book Awards.

At the heart of Boy from the North Country is a question that confronts us all: How well can we ever know the people who made us? Through the story of a young man returning home to care for his dying mother, Sussman’s acclaimed debut explores family secrets, the search for identity, the burden and gift of inheritance, and the ways love can persist through grief, uncertainty, and time.

The conversation examines the novel’s central themes of memory, loss, healing, and forgiveness, as well as the profound relationship between parents and children. Sussman will discuss the stories families tell, the stories they conceal, and the role of fiction in helping us understand both. The evening also explores the creative process behind transforming deeply personal questions into a work of resonant and emotionally powerful literature.

Sam Sussman is the author of Boy From the North Country, a USA Today Bestseller and Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award in Fiction and Debut Fiction. Boy From the North Country was reviewed by Kirkus as “the most beautiful and moving mother-son story in recent memory,” named by Oprah as the best debut novel of Fall 2025, and launched with a profile in the New York Times. Sussman has a B.A. from Swarthmore and an M.Phil from Oxford and has lived in London and Berlin. He has written for Harper’s, Vogue, and the Washington Post and taught writing in the U.K, India, and Chile.

Julian Tepper is well-known to Salmagundi as the Director of the Coffee House Club. His fifth novel, “Getting Even/Letting Go (Rare Bird)” will be published in the fall of 2026. His writing has appeared in the Paris Review, Playboy, Brooklyn Rail, Zyzzyva, Daily Beast, Bomb, Tablet Magazine, the New York Review of Architecture, and elsewhere. His essay, “Locking Down with the Family You’ve Just Eviscerated in a Novel” was a “Notable Essay of 2022” in Best American Essays 2022. He was born and raised in New York City.

Ticketed attendees may reserve for dinner in the dining room (a normally member-exclusive benefit) via our Reservations page with the message “Sussman talk”. Reservations must be made in advance after RSVP-ing.