West Newton Cinema Reads: Perrotta & Phillips

Description

West Newton Cinema Reads & Newtonville Books present:

Tom Perrotta, author of The Leftovers, Little Children, and Election, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jayne Anne Phillips reading from, discussing, and signing copies of their new books, Ghost Town and Small Town Girls, followed by a screening of The Last Picture Show.

Tom Perrotta’s new novel, Ghost Town, is a gripping and darkly nostalgic tale about a tumultuous summer in 1970s suburban New Jersey, told from the perspective of a middle-aged writer looking back on events that changed his life—and the story he finally has the courage to tell. Ghost Town reveals the way our ghosts are always with us, even when we think we’ve left them behind.

Small Town Girls is Oprah’s #1 most anticipated book of 2026. Part coming-of-age story, part social history, this tender, sparkling memoir is Jayne Anne Phillips’s love letter to the place and the people who have shaped her perceptions and her writing. Phillips grew up in Buckhannon, West Virginia—dense with forests and small churches, rich in history and misunderstandings. In her singular voice, Phillips re-creates the place she calls home and reflects on her origins, the mysteries of memory, and the troubled annals of the last American centuries.

And in Peter Bogdonavich’s The Last Picture Show (1971), adapted from Larry McMurtry’s novel, we experience an aching portrait of a dying West. Set in Texas in the early fifties, The Last Picture Show portrays the daily shuffles of three futureless teens—enigmatic Sonny (Timothy Bottoms), wayward jock Duane (Jeff Bridges), and rich rebel Jacy (Cybill Shepherd)—and the aging, lost souls who bump up against them. Shot in arresting black-and-white, this hushed depiction of crumbling American values remains a pivotal film (Criterion).

Our event will begin with a reading and conversation between the authors in our first-floor Cinema 2, followed by an audience Q&A and book signing in our lobby, with books for sale courtesy of Newtonville Books. We will then return to Cinema 2 to watch The Last Picture Show.

PANEL DISCUSSION

TOM PERROTTA

Tom Perrotta is the author of eleven works of fiction, including Election and Little Children, which were made into Oscar-nominated films, and The Leftovers and Mrs. Fletcher, which were adapted into acclaimed HBO series.

JAYNE ANNE PHILLIPS

Jayne Anne Phillips is the author of Black Tickets, Machine Dreams, Fast Lanes, Shelter, MotherKind, Lark and Termite, Quiet Dell, and Night Watch, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Her work has been a finalist once for the National Book Award and twice for the National Book Critics Circle Award. The recipient of Guggenheim, National Endowment for the Arts, Howard, Bunting, and Rockefeller Foundation Fellowships, she is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.