This event is part of our Newer Voices Series.
General Admission tickets are complimentary, but we encourage you to support these newer authors and purchase their books.

PURCHASE TICKETS 
Comp General Admission Tickets RSVP HERE
$30 Reserved Seat + Book
$35 Two Reserved Section Seats + 1 book

iO Tillett Wright is an artist, activist, actor, speaker, TV host and writer. iO’s work deals with identity, be it through photography and the Self Evident Truths Project/We Are You campaign or on television as the co-host of MTV’s Suspect.
iO has exhibited artwork in New York and Tokyo, was a featured contributor on Underground Culture to T: The New York Times Style Magazine, and has had photography featured in GQ, Elle, New York Magazine, and The New York Times Magazine. iO is a regular speaker at universities, discussing expanding one’s circle of normalcy and embracing those that are different than you. A native New Yorker, iO is now based in Los Angeles.

“It’s already a rare and wonderful thing to have a great story—but a unique and compelling voice to tell it with is even rarer. With Darling Days, iO Tillett Wright takes us right to where great storytelling lives. A terrific, terrific book.” — Anthony Bourdain

 “iO Tillett Wright is nothing short of a force of nature-an artist, an activist, and a survivor. iO has packed a lot in his young years and in this extraordinary memoir has created something brave and true, as devastating as it is inspiring.” –Jill Soloway

Born into the beautiful bedlam of downtown New York in the eighties, iO Tillett Wright came of age at the intersection of punk, poverty, heroin, and art. This was a world of self-invented characters, glamorous superstars, and strung-out sufferers, ground zero of drag and performance art. Still, no personality was more vibrant and formidable than iO’s mother’s. Rhonna, a showgirl and young widow, was a mercurial, erratic glamazon. She was iO’s fiercest defender and only authority in a world with few boundaries and even fewer indicators of normal life. At the center ofDarling Days is the remarkable relationship between a fiery kid and a domineering ma—a bond defined by freedom and control, excess and sacrifice; by heartbreaking deprivation, agonizing rupture, and, ultimately, forgiveness.

Darling Days is also a provocative examination of culture and identity, of the instincts that shape us and the norms that deform us, and of the courage and resilience it takes to listen closely to your deepest self. When a group of boys refuse to let six-year-old, female-born iO play ball, iO instantly adopts a new persona, becoming a boy named Ricky—a choice iO’s parents support and celebrate. It is the start of a profound exploration of gender and identity through the tenderest years, and the beginning of a life invented and reinvented at every step. Alternating between the harrowing and the hilarious, Darling Days is the candid, tough, and stirring memoir of a young person in search of an authentic self as family and home life devolve into chaos.

Sue Naegle started her career at United Talent Agency where she quickly moved up the ranks to partner and co-head of the  TV Lit Department. In 2008, she became President of HBO Entertainment, and was instrumental in shepherding such shows as Game of Thrones, Boardwalk Empire, True Blood, Treme, East Bound and Down,  Enlightened, Veep and Girls. In 2013, Naegle left her post at HBO to start her own television and film production company, Naegle Ink. She is currently an executive producer of Robert Kirkman’s Cinemax series, Outcast, and has numerous other projects in development at HBO and other cable networks. Most recently, Naegle joined Annapurna Pictures as President of their television division.