In Conversation: On Matrix: A Novel

Lauren Groff is a two-time National Book Award finalist and The New York Times bestselling author of Fates and Furies: A Novel, Arcadia, and The Monsters of Templeton, and the short story collection Florida, among others. She has won the Story Prize and been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and her work regularly appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and elsewhere. In Matrix: A Novel (Riverhead Books), 17-year-old Marie de France is cast from the royal court by Eleanor of Aquitaine to be the prioress of an impoverished English abbey where the nuns are on the brink of starvation and beset by disease. Facing the challenges of her new life, Marie steadily supplants her desire for a family, homeland, and the passions of her youth with something new to her: devotion to her sisters and a conviction in her own divine visions. The last in a long line of women warriors and crusaders, Marie is determined to chart a boldly different course – for the women she now leads and protects, and for herself. “Groff has outdone herself with an accomplishment as radiant as Marie’s visions,” said Publishers Weekly, praising what is a defiant and timely exploration of the raw power of female creativity in a corrupted world.

Mitchell Kaplan is a co-founder of Miami Book Fair, has served as chairperson of its board and continues to guide the programming team at the Fair. A Miami Beach native, he founded the independent bookstore Books & Books in 1982, which now has five South Florida locations and hosts more than 400 literary events a year. Kaplan also hosts the podcast The Literary Life with Mitchell Kaplan, and with Paula Mazur founded The Mazur Kaplan Company, a production company bringing books to the screen. Their most recent film, Let Him Go, adapted from Larry Watson’s novel of the same name, features Diane Lane and Kevin Costner.