A Virtual Conversation with Alice Austen
Thursday June 19, 2025
7:00 PM CST
Alice Austen is the author of the recently released novel, 33 Place Brugmann. She won the John Cassavetes Award for her debut film Give Me Liberty (writer/producer). She is a past resident of the Royal Court Theatre and her internationally produced plays include Animal Farm (Steppenwolf Theatre), Water, Cherry Orchard Massacre, and Girls in the Boat (Dramatic Publishing). She studied creative writing under Seamus Heaney at Harvard, where she received her JD, after which she moved to Brussels and lived on Place Brugmann. Austen currently lives in Milwaukee and is working on a new film and her next novel.
Book Club
33 Place Brugmann
by Alice Austen
An in-person discussion led by Dr. Larry Allums
Thursday June 26, 2025
7:00 PM CST
An extraordinarily accomplished debut novel—a love story, mystery, and philosophical puzzle—told in the singular voices of the residents of a Beaux Arts apartment building in Belgium in 1939.
“The world of 33 Place Brugmann is spacious and intricately connected, filled with both horror and brilliant light. Alice Austen uses her considerable gifts to remind us that the past and the present are more connected than we wish to believe, and that vigilance, loyalty and art hold the key to survival. This is a beautiful and deeply engaging novel.”—Ann Patchett, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Tom Lake