A LITTLE BIT IN LOVE

Think your last relationship ended badly? At least no one ever wrote you this: “Dear Ugly, I will never love you. NEVER. I am going to California.” That’s an excerpt from graphic novelist Patty Van Norman’s cartoon “Dear Ugly,” included in the new anthology Love Is a Four-Letter Word: True Stories of Breakups, Bad Relationships, and Broken Hearts. Tonight, commiserate with some of the book’s heartbroken writers—including Maud Newton, Josh Kilmer-Purcell, D.E. Rasso, and Amanda Stern—who will share their sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes hilarious tales of rejection. Other contributors to the book include Gary Shteyngart (Absurdistan), cartoonist Lynda Barry (What It Is), Kate Christensen (Trouble), and Junot Díaz (The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao), who shares in his story “Homecoming, With Turtle” that his ex sabotaged a trip with his new squeeze by writing her an anonymous letter “that revealed my infidelities in excruciating detail.” Double snap.

Wed., Aug. 19, 7 p.m., 2009