The Writer’s Factory: Author/Illustrator Panel and Book Signing

Come join us on Sunday, October 4th at 2 pm in The Reading Room for a special panel featuring two sets of exciting author/illustrator pairings, with book signings to follow! The event with kick off with selected readings and a panel conversation with the duos behind the short story collection People Who Live Alone Talk Too Much (Sofi Stambo & Yana Mihaylova) and the humorous advice book Gina School (Gina Barreca & John Guillemette). Find out what makes the alchemy of words on the page interact so well with these hand-drawn illustrations, and how these collaborations came into being. Reserve your free seat at this link! Books will be available for on-site purchase, with cash or card.

People Who Live Alone Talk Too Much — written by Sofi Stambo, illustrations by Yana Mihaylova

A nervous dog takes flight over Manhattan. A woman soothes her neighbors with multilingual telepathy. A purse snatcher inherits her victim’s scribbled lists—and her worries. In these stories, immigrants to New York City work their way through absurd situations into even messier ones, communing with their fellow diners, officemates, and the local cemetery geese, and greeting chaos with a grin. From Bulgaria to America, People Who Live Alone Talk Too Much pulls at the threads of daily life, unwinding the ordinary into scenes of hilarity, introspection, and surprising connection. With the puckish humor of Fran Lebowitz and the keen inventiveness of Lydia Davis, Sofi Stambo’s debut collection leans into curiosity, family, and the old-world bonds that draw her motley characters together.

Gina School — written by Gina Barreca, illustrations by John Guillemette

GINA SCHOOL offers open, early, and rolling admissions, perpetual latecomers, mature students, speed readers, book groups, gloriously erudite librarians, anxious applicants in need of reassurance, writers in need of prompts, and gift givers. Extravagantly illustrated, provocative, reassuring and witty, GINA SCHOOL— a gorgeously delicate yet voluptuous volume — is virtually impossible to resist as an emotional support book, a motivating tome, and a daily inspiration source. GINA SCHOOL reassures readers that they are not alone, they are not nuts, and that laughing together is as close as you can get to another person without hugging them. You never have to graduate from GINA SCHOOL and will return with delight, given that it pairs just as well with coffee and cake, cheese and fruit, espresso and champagne—and, if you wish, a cap and gown.

Sofi Stambo (Author)

Sofi Stambo is the author of People Who Live Alone Talk Too Much which won Restless Books’ Kellman Prize for Immigrant Literature. The book was longlisted for The Institute for Immigration Research 2026 New American Voices Award. Sofi Stambo was awarded the 2024LitMag’s Virginia Woolf Award for short fiction for an excerpt from her novel This Train Has Sailed. Stambo won the first prize in fiction in 2015 Dzanc Books/Disquiet International literary contest. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize 2018. Stambo Has been awarded residencies at Sewanee and Bread Loaf Writers Conferences, Milley Arts and Art Omi. Sofi Stambo has a master’s degree in Literature from Sofia University St. K. Ohridski, Bulgaria, and was a graduate student in Literature at City College, New York. She has been published by many literary magazines, including Epiphany, Guernica, The Kenyon Review, New Letters, Fourteen Hills, New England Review, Stand, American Short Fiction, Agni, Chicago Quarterly Review, Granta Bulgaria, Tin House, Another Chicago Magazine, Bellevue Literary Review, The Common, River Stix, The Rumpus, and others.

Yana Mihaylova (Illustrator)

Yana Mihaylova is a Bulgarian-born and NYC-raised artist and designer. She received her BFA from Cooper Union in 2014, and has studied part-time at Grand Central Atelier, New York Academy of Art, Institute of Classical Art & Architecture, and the Art Students League. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Gina Barreca (Author)

Gina Barreca books include the classic bestselling book on women’s humor, “They Used to Call Me Snow White But I Drifted: Women’s Strategic Use of Humor,” as well as “It’s Not That I’m Bitter, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Visible Panty Lines and Conquered the World,” and “Babes in Boyland: A Personal History of Coeducation in the Ivy League.” Of the other six books she’s written or co-written, several have been translated into to other languages–including Chinese, Spanish, Japanese, and German. Called “smart and funny” by “People” magazine and “Very, very funny. For a woman,” by Dave Barry, Gina was deemed a “feminist humor maven” by Ms. Magazine. Novelist Wally Lamb said “Barreca’s prose, in equal measures, is hilarious and humane.” She edits the FAST WOMEN series for Woodhall Press.

Gina’s work has appeared in the The New York Times, The Independent of London, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Cosmopolitan, and The Harvard Business Review. She’s a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Connecticut, where she’s also won the institution’s highest award for excellent in teaching. Gina has delivered, often as a repeat guest, keynotes at events organized by the Women’s Campaign School at Yale and the National Association of Independent Schools, The Chicago Humanities Festival, Women In Federal Law Enforcement, Chautauqua and The Smithsonian–to name a few. Her B.A. is from Dartmouth College, where she was the first woman to be named Alumni Scholar, her M.A. is from Cambridge University, where she was a Reynold’s Fellow, and her Ph.D. is from the City University of New York, where she lived close to a good delicatessen. A member of the Friars’ Club, Gina can be found in the Library of Congress or in the make-up aisle of Walgreens.

John Guillemette (Illustrator)

John Guillemette is a writer and artist who enjoys hikes, houseplants, and disparaging mankind. He reads monks & drunks; if a monk wrote it, or a drunk wrote it, then he has probably read it. John lives in New Haven, Connecticut, where he strives to create weird comics both compulsively readable and infinitely layered. He describes his audience as “people you regret getting into conversations with at parties.”