On Becoming with Susan Choi, Geoff Dyer, and Douglas Stuart

In this main stage event recorded live at Narrowsburg's Deep Water Literary Fest 2025, three acclaimed writers explore how memory, family, and social environments indelibly shape a person, and how even in the most fractured of worlds, people find the resilience to survive and forge their own identity. Susan Choi’s new novel, Flashlight (2025) explores a girl’s confrontation with loss and memory after her father’s sudden disappearance revealing how childhood trauma can splinter a family. Booker Prize winner Douglas Stuart portrays adolescence in working-class Glasgow in his acclaimed novels Shuggie Bain and Young Mungo, while critic and writer Geoff Dyer adds a non-fiction perspective with Homework, reflecting on his own coming-of-age in 1960s–70s England during a time of post-war upheaval and rapid social change.