Emily St. John Mandel

Our guest this week is Emily St. John Mandel, a writer whose work experiments with literary noir, speculative fiction, and horror. Her bestselling books include The Glass Hotel and Sea of Tranquility, and her post-apocalyptic novel Station Eleven was adapted into a limited series for HBO. This year, Mandel returns with her new novel Exit Party, diving into a future United States locked in a new civil war. It is within this painful landscape that Mandel explores freedom, surveillance, and the possibility of a better world.

On September 18, 2026, Emily St. John Mandel came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to talk with Daniel Handler, the author of numerous books for all ages – sometimes under the pen name Lemony Snicket.